“I am not saying yes,” I say quickly, pressing my hand to Rakkh’s chest, grounding myself in the solid reality of him. “I am saying this is what it wants.”
“And I am saying,” he replies, just as quietly, “that wanting does not grant it the right to take.”
Travnyk clears his throat, a low, deliberate sound. “There may be a third path.”
We both look at him. He gestures toward the column, then toward me and finally toward Rakkh.
“Shared load. Not permanent. Rotational oversight. The ship is already recalibrating based on proximity and relational priority.”
Tomas blinks. “Do you mean relationship? With the ship?”
Travnyk’s mouth twitches. “I do.”
Heat floods my face. Rakkh doesn’t move his hand.
“If the ship is adapting,” Travnyk continues, “then it may accept guidance without continuous control, provided it believes the guiding intelligence will remain accessible.”
Accessible. I look back at the column. At the faint glow pulsing in time with my heart.
“You’re saying that it doesn’t want me inside it,” I realize. “But it wants me… reachable.”
Rakkh exhales slowly, the tension in his shoulders shifting, not gone, but redirected. His thumb brushes once along my spine, a silent question. I nod, just slightly.
“I won’t let it take more than I can give,” I say. “And I won’t do it without you.”
The ship hums more steadily now. Not agreement, but acceptance.
The column dims, the patterns stabilizing into a new configuration. The system is holding, waiting for confirmation. Rakkh straightens, wings settling back into place. His hand stays at my back.
“Then we move forward,” he says, voice firm. “Together.”
The word resonates through me and through the chamber, then out and through the ship itself. And somewhere deep beneath the metal and memory, something ancient recalibrates around a truth it was never programmed to understand. That I am no longer a single point of failure—and neither is he.
I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a decision that can’t be undone once I step over it.
Rakkh shifts first, not toward the column or the corridor, but toward me. His body angles subtly, shielding without isolating, the way he’s learned to do inside this place. His presence is constant, and it is more than clear it is not reactive; it is chosen. He’s choosing me.
I look up at him, really look. I see the tension he holds because that’s who he is, but also the restraint layered over it. He could force things, tear metal, demand answers, impose his will the way Zmaj warriors are trained to do.
But he hasn’t. He’s letting me decide. And that excites and terrifies me at the same time—almost as much as it steadies me.
Tomas clears his throat, the sound thin in the quiet.
“So… we’re not dying right now? Right?”
Travnyk huffs softly. “Not immediately.”
“That’s… not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be.”
Despite myself, a breath of laughter escapes, quiet and shaky, but real. Rakkh glances down, brow ridges drawing together and pulling his horns down. The corner of his mouth tilts in something that isn’t quite a smile but feels like one anyway.
“You should sit,” he murmurs. Not an order. Concern.
“I’m okay,” I say, then amend it. “I will be.”
The ship reacts to that, not with light or pressure, but with a subtle easing in the air. Tomas inhales deeply and lets it out again, shoulders dropping an inch. Travnyk studies the column one last time, then straightens.
