“For who?” Rakkh asks.
No one answers.
I step closer to the wall. The panel directly in front of me flickers once—a thin line of pale light skimming its surface before vanishing again, like a system testing a circuit it hasn’t powered in centuries.
“That was you,” Tomas says, voice tight. “It did that because of you.”
“I didn’t touch anything,” I whisper.
The panel flickers again—longer this time—and something like depth forms beneath the surface. Not an image. Structure. Layers stacked behind layers.
“This isn’t just control,” I murmur, dread pooling low. “It’s a record storehouse.”
Rakkh’s voice is close. “A record of what?”
I swallow. “Of who.”
The panel doesn’t light all at once.
A faint grid blooms across the surface—thin lines intersecting at precise angles, too exact to be grown, too deliberate to be anything but designed. The hum beneath my feet tightens, not louder, but cleaner, as if the ship has narrowed its attention to a single thread.
Rakkh’s breath changes behind me. I feel it before I hear it, the subtle expansion of his chest, the way his wings draw in as though space itself has grown smaller.
“This place,” he says quietly, “was not made for my kind.”
“No,” I agree. My mouth is dry. “It wasn’t.”
The grid resolves into shapes. Icons. Placeholders. My mind reaches for familiar patterns—menus, directories, interfaces—and every time it does, my pulse spikes.
Because humans were never supposed to be here.
Not on Tajss. Not in the histories the Zmaj tell. Not in the ruins buried beneath the dunes. We didn’t build things that lasted. We didn’t survive long enough to leave this kind of mark.
And yet?—
A symbol appears at the center of the panel.
Not alien. Not Zmaj. Not abstract.
Simple. Functional.
A triangle nested inside a circle.
My breath leaves me in a slow, shaking exhale.
Tomas sucks in air sharply. “That’s… that’s not alien, is it?”
Travnyk studies it, head tilted. “No. It appears symbolic. Informational. Designed for rapid recognition.”
“For who?” Tomas asks.
“For someone accustomed to abstract interfaces,” Travnyk replies.
What he doesn’t understand is that the symbol is in Common.
Writing isn’t something we do on Tajss. There’s no paper to waste, no permanence to justify it. Only the most critical things ever get written down.
Which means this mattered.
