“I know.”
Silence swells again, but it doesn’t feel empty. Not anymore.
I curl closer to the rabbit. The repair is crude — uneven stitches, mismatched fur, a seam that doesn’t lie smooth. But it holds. Firm. Resilient. A second chance at something broken.
I think about the cloak on the chair. The warm drink I never saw but smelled. The small gestures of metal and cloth and kindness. And I realize — this isn’t just a gamble. It’s a conversation.
Between bone and flesh. Between a Reaper and a human. Between fear and want.
And maybe — just maybe — this time I’ll believe the quiet more than I fear the roar.
Because for the first time in a long time — I don’t feel invisible.
I feel safe.
And I feel… wanted.
Which is a hell of a thing to feel on a warship full of ghosts.
CHAPTER 12
VOKAR
The cliff’s edge tastes of dust and thunder.
I stand at the lip of Storder’s dead-rock precipice, cape whipping in the wind, bone-spurred boots anchored on shale that crumbles under pressure. My hands grip a chunk of rock the size of a loss-born child in human frail terms — but to me it feels like fate’s hinge — and I fling it out over the void.
It arcs high, black against the darkening forest below, and disappears into nothing. I hear the whoosh — the parted air screaming after steel. Then silence. Blank, hollow. The cliff answers with nothing but a void.
I stay motionless a moment, breathing so hard my ribs ache. The rock was weight. Becoming weight. Maybe that’s what I want to rid myself of — the heaviness of war, of claim, of every scar and killing echo inside me. The stone vanishes, but its absence leaves space. Clean. Empty. And I hear echoes of what might come instead — soft, living, frail.
A shadow shifts behind me. Heavy footsteps on gravel.
“Warlord,” comes Yorta’s voice — low and wary, like a tired drum after too many wars. He doesn’t move to stand besideme. Doesn’t wait for permission. He simply watches. Always watches.
I don’t bother to hide the burning in my chest. I don’t bother to claim calm. Because I’m not calm. Not now.
“Your six,” he says. “Arnab loiters near the supply crates. Watching. We know that look. It smells of bones and challenge.”
I chuck the empty fistful of earth over my shoulder. Dirt scatters across cracked shale, dust drifting like ash over dead moons. The scent: dry stone, cracked metal, salt of old blood — a smell I know too well.
“Let him watch,” I mutter. “Tonight, I’m not hunting things that move. I’m clearing ghost-hollows.”
He frowns — bone-ridge crinkling. “Keep your grip, Warlord. Clearing fields is one thing. Clearing your heart... another.”
I bare my teeth — partly in defiance, partly in fear.
“Then you better learn to dig, old one.”
With that, Yorta leaves, the echo of boots fading on gravel. The wind gusts up the ridge, rattling bone-plates and cloak tassels until I hear only the pulse in my ears. The void yawns before me, endless. The night is still, braced, waiting.
I kneel. Palms press to shale. I taste rock. I taste regret.
I whisper a name — hers — and the rock sharpness under my fingers softens in my mind. I envision soil. Moss. Blue-glow. Light underneath starlight. Life instead of death.
I rise. Bones crack softly, like old doors swinging open.
Tonight, I build.
