“We need to leave. We need to leave—right now—” Tomas whispers.
He stops talking at the sound of sand outside the hull shifting. Slow and heavy—a warning that the creature we escaped earlier hasn’t given up. It’s hunting. Waiting for a mistake. Waiting for the weakest link. My stomach tightens painfully.
“Tomas,” I whisper, “be quiet.”
Rakkh growls low—not at Tomas this time, but at the desert. And then the violet pulse comes again. A faint shimmer glows deep inside the ship’s cracked hull. Not bright or threatening. No, it’s more like a… calling.
It feels warm—somehow—familiar, like a memory that doesn’t belong to me.
My breath catches. Rakkh feels the shift and gently spins me to face him. He grips my shoulders, eyes fierce and too bright. Shining with a fire that feels like he’s burning through the layers of who I present to the world until all that’s left is me—without anything to shield me.
“What do you feel?” he demands, voice low, controlled—but there’s an edge that makes it clear he’s barely holding himself back.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “It’s like—it’s like déjà vu, but deeper. In my bones.”
He growls, baring his teeth at the ship.
“That is not memory. That is manipulation.”
“It’s not manipulating me,” I say, though I’m no longer sure.
His grip softens, but his voice does not.
“You do not walk toward that pulse unless you walk behind me.”
Travnyk approaches the seam again and touches the outer curve of the ship with the tip of one finger.
“This vessel… it is not dead.” He glances at me. “It wakes because she is here.”
I swallow hard.
“That makes no sense.”
“It makes every kind of sense,” Rakkh mutters darkly.
The dune outside shudders again, and it feels angrier. If a massive pile of sand can feel at all. Tomas whimpers and backpedals into the wall.
Rakkh releases me only long enough to brace both feet wider, shifting his stance, wings half-flaring instinctively.
“They come,” he says softly. “Not one beast. Several.”
“We can’t go back out there,” I say, prickles racing over my skin.
“No,” he agrees. His jaw tightens. “We must go further in.”
Tomas chokes on a breath. “Deeper? Inside that? Are you insane?”
Travnyk, calm as ever, lifts a brow ridge.
“Outside is certain death. Deeper inside is… possible death.”
“That is not better!” Tomas squeaks.
“It is better odds,” Travnyk corrects.
Rakkh turns to me, ignoring Tomas entirely.
“Lia. You choose.”
