“I lead,” he says. “You follow.”
My pulse stutters. The ship hums again. The floor trembles. Something is coming. Something that woke with the ship. And in that moment—right before the next sound echoes from deeper inside the dark—a realization hits me with bone-deep certainty:
The ship didn’t just wake up because we touched it.
It woke up because I did.
12
LIA
Rakkh must sense my fear because his hand tightens on my waist.
“We face it together,” he murmurs.
And then, from the depths of the alien vessel, a single, hollow tone rings out—not a knock,
not a hum or a pulse, but more like a heartbeat answering mine.
The pulse echoes again. Low. Hollow. It sounds too slow for a running machine and too steady for shifting metal to be natural. It’s either a heartbeat or something mimicking one.
Rakkh steps forward, positioning himself between me and the widening corridor. One wing lifts—just enough to brush my shoulder. My skin flushes warm at the contact.
Travnyk moves beside him, blade held at the ready. Tomas lingers behind us, plastered to the wall as if he’s trying to merge with it. The hum vibrates under my boots. I swallow hard.
“It feels… alive,” I whisper.
Rakkh nods once, jaw tight. “It seems to recognize a living presence.”
Travnyk’s eyes glow faintly as he leans in and touches the wall with the back of his hand.
“These veins—they warm when Lia breathes nearby.”
I stiffen. “How do you know it’s because of me?”
“Because they didn’t glow until you moved closer,” he says calmly.
The metal pulses as if agreeing. My stomach twists.
“That’s not comforting,” I say.
“It was not meant to be,” Rakkh growls.
The corridor ahead seems to inhale slowly. The walls expand by a fraction, like lungs filling with air. A whisper slides along the curved metal surface—so faint I almost miss it, but Rakkh doesn’t. He tilts his head, listening, and his pupils narrow to slits.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He hesitates, and that alone terrifies me more than anything so far.
“It speaks,” he murmurs. “Not words. Not thought. Something older still.”
My skin prickles. “Older than what?”
“Older than the war,” Travnyk answers softly. “Older than any of us.”
Across the chamber, Tomas makes a strangled noise.
“Okay, can we leave? I vote we leave. I vote we leave and salt this cursed dune behind us.”
