Injury detected. Initiating stasis protocol.
“What? No, I didn’t?—”
The launch sequence activated simultaneously with the stasis protocol. A cold mist flooded the cramped space, and herbody went limp against the acceleration couch as the restraints tightened around her. The mist tasted sweet, almost pleasant, nothing like the acrid smoke still clinging to her skin.
Stasis protocol complete. Sleep now, traveler.
“I’m not… I didn’t authorize…”
But her voice was already fading, her thoughts scattering like leaves in a storm as the pod tumbled free. Through the viewport, she watched theWind’s Whispershrink to a distant flame, her crew’s tomb, her almost-grave. The stars wheeled past as the pod took her away from the wreckage, away from everything she knew.
Someone did this. Someone wanted me dead.
The thought was the last clear thing in her mind before the stasis took her. Somewhere out there, a coded signal began its endless transmission.
I am alive. Search for me.
Darkness rose up like water, and Ember drowned in it.
CHAPTER 2
Rykan tracked the big grazing animal through the snow covered trees. The heavy snowfall was unusual this early in the season, but it made tracking easier. Each hoofprint told a story—the animal was old, favoring its left hind leg, and moving too slowly to outrun a determined predator. An easy kill. Almost disappointingly so.
He followed in silence, his boots leaving barely a whisper in the fresh powder. His beast stirred beneath his skin, eager for the chase, but he kept it leashed with his usual discipline. There was no sport in releasing his full form for prey this simple. Better to save his energy, use his bow to make a clean kill, and drag the carcass back to his cabin to add to his winter preparations.
The grazing animal paused at the edge of a frozen stream, lowering its massive head to sniff at the ice. His muscles coiled as he started to raise his bow. Thirty meters. An easy shot. The animal would be dead before it even registered the threat.
Then the sky screamed.
His head snapped upwards as a streak of fire tore through the grey clouds, burning brighter than the noon sun. It came down fast, too fast, a falling star aimed directly at the mountain’s northern peak. He tracked its trajectory, watching it disappear behind the ridge. He expected to see the flash of impact and the plume of smoke that would mark a crash site.
Instead, there was only silence.
The grazing animal bolted, but he barely noticed it flee. He lowered his bow, his attention now completely diverted from the hunt. The lack of explosion was wrong. That kind of velocity, that kind of heat—a downed vessel should have torn a hole in the mountain.
He stood motionless in the silence as snow drifted down from disturbed branches, settling on his shoulders and in his dark hair. His beast prowled restlessly inside him, curious despite itself.
Not my concern.
Whatever had fallen from the sky—spacecraft, satellite, debris from some orbital catastrophe—it was none of his business. He’d chosen to live high in the mountains precisely to avoid involvement with the outside world. Six years alone in these mountains, six years of blessed silence and solitary hunting, and he intended to keep it that way.
The animal’s tracks were already filling with fresh snow. If he wanted to add to his winter stores, he needed to?—
A shift in the wind brought him the scent, distant but still detectable to his enhanced senses.
Burning metal. Scorched earth. Chemical accelerants. And beneath it all, so faint he might have imagined it, something else. Something that made his beast snap to attention with sudden, fierce intensity.
Life.
His jaw clenched. He could still walk away. Whoever had crashed in his territory was almost certainly dead already, and if by some miracle they weren’t, someone would come looking eventually, asking questions he didn’t want to answer.
He took three steps towards his cabin, then stopped.
The wind shifted again, and that faint thread of scent wrapped around his senses like a hook. His beast snarled, straining against the control he’d spent years perfecting.
Go. Find. Protect.
“Damn it,” he growled to no one. Then he turned north and headed for the wreck.
