Rakkh does not laugh. He studies the alcove, the glow, the way the ship seems to lean toward me. His jaw tightens, something dark flickering behind his eyes.
“This thing was waiting,” he says. “Not for us. For you.”
I pull my hand back and flex my fingers. The warmth lingers, fading slowly.
“I think,” I say carefully, “it was never meant to wake like this. It was supposed to stay dormant. Hidden. Protected.”
“Until you,” Travnyk says.
“Until someone like me,” I correct, softly.
Silence settles over the chamber—heavy, expectant. Outside, far beyond the hull, something scrapes uselessly against the ship’s armored exterior. Inside, the ship hums—steadier, calmer. And for the first time since we stepped into the violet dark, I realize something that makes my stomach drop. The ship doesn’t just recognize me. It’s relieved to have found me.
The ship seems to settle around us like it’s a living thing, and the tension eases at last. It’s no longer tight, but deliberate.
The violet glow dims from a flare to a steady wash, soft enough that the edges of the alcove stop feeling like a trap and start feeling like… shelter. For the first time in what feels like hours, my lungs take a full breath without snagging on panic.
Outside, something scrapes again—slow, stubborn, hungry. The sound travels through the hull in muted vibrations, like claws on stone heard from underwater.
Tomas flinches at every sound. Travnyk doesn’t. He stands with his head angled slightly, listening with his whole body—calm in a way that borders on unsettling. His tusks catch the violet light when he turns, fixed and gleaming.
Rakkh is the opposite of calm. He is a wall of contained violence behind me, wings half-unfurled in the cramped space, like he’s ready to shield, strike, or tear the ship apart if it dares to breathe wrong.
And I… I’m the problem. The ship hums in time with my pulse, as if my body is the metronome it’s chosen. My palm tingles where I touched the panel. The warmth has seeped into my skinand refuses to leave, like I pressed my hand to memory instead of metal.
Hold the line. Protect what comes next.
The impression lingers behind my eyes. I swallow hard and force myself to look at what the alcove actually contains.
Not crates. No obvious weapons. Not even anything that screams “spaceship” in a way I’d recognize with my limited experience. No jagged consoles or blinking lights.
Everything is smooth. Grown, like Travnyk said.
A low shelf curves out of the wall at waist height. Shallow indentations mark it—places for hands, maybe, shaped for a body that isn’t mine. Above it, etched grooves form spirals and segmented lines that pulse faintly, as if the ship is breathing through them.
At the center is a narrow recess—an opening no wider than my forearm. Inside, something rests. No glow. No hum. Waiting. My stomach tightens.
“Don’t,” Rakkh says, the word roughened.
“I wasn’t—” I stop because I was.
The truth is I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. The desert was poison and dead plants and patterns I could follow. This is something else. This is history with teeth. I take one careful step closer anyway.
Rakkh moves with me, not beside me—around me. His body shifts to keep himself between me and any angle of the ship that could become a threat. Even in this tight space, he somehow manages it.
It shouldn’t be possible to feel protected and caged at the same time, and yet that’s exactly what I feel. My gaze drops to the recess. The violet light brightens a fraction, as if pleased I noticed it.
Tomas whispers hoarsely, “Lia… maybe don’t touch random alien holes in the wall?”
Travnyk makes a sound that might be amusement—low, brief, gone.
“It already chose her,” he says, speaking softly too.
That doesn’t help Tomas’s panic. It doesn’t help mine, either. I crouch and peer inside. Metal. Not like the panel. Not like the ship’s grown walls.
This is a different alloy—duller, matte, textured with microgrooves. Not decorative. Functional. Designed to lock into something. To carry something. Or to be carried.
It looks like a thin baton split down the center, with a seam that suggests it could unfold. A tool. A key. Or a weapon.
