Reality. It always comes back.
I exhale slowly and push myself up, the cool of the early air fading as the suns climb higher. He rises with me, slower than he would have before, but steady.
By the time the suns clear the horizon, we’re moving. Traveling until the desert breaks. Not gradually. One moment it stretches endless and empty in every direction—the next—it doesn’t.
I slow without meaning to. Kael does too. Ahead of us, the ridge drops away into something that shouldn’t exist out here.
Stone. Structure. Height. Not whole or untouched, but still standing. My breath catches.
“Oh… my God.”
The words leave me before I can stop them.
It rises out of the desert like something that refused to die.
Massive structures, broken and reinforced, patched with metal and whatever else they could find. Towers that lean but don’t fall. Built to survive.
Movement lines the rooftops. Figures watching. Armed. Ready. They’ve been expecting us. My stomach tightens. Are they expecting what followed us too?
Kael goes still beside me. His gaze tracks everything. Not just what’s there, but how it fits together.
“Defensible,” he says, voice low.
I glance at him.
“That’s what you see?”
His gaze flicks to me briefly.
“It is what matters.”
Of course it is, but there’s something else there now. Something quieter. Something dangerous in a different way. Possibility.
Behind us, the others slow. The formation tightens, pulling together as we approach open ground. Drazan moves to the front without hesitation.
“They’ll have seen us,” one of the others says.
“They already have,” Drazan answers.
We start down the slope. The closer we get, the more it shows. The damage isn’t new. Layered. Repaired. Broken again. Reinforced. They’ve been holding this place together piece by piece.
At the base, the ground is packed hard, worn smooth by movement. Tracks overlap—boots, claws, something heavier. Traffic. Life. Not just survival.
We don’t stop. There’s no gate or barrier, but also no doubt that we’re seen.
I feel it the second we step off sand onto something harder. The shift is immediate, not loud, just attention tightening around us. Eyes from above. From broken openings. From places I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t learned to look. Watchers.
Drazan doesn’t slow which tells me everything. We’re expected. Still… no one relaxes. Not them. Not us.
Kael’s arm brushes mine as we step fully into the city. Contact, intentional, and my pulse jumps in response.
The ground shifts, uneven, broken, but patterned. Paths cut through debris, connecting spaces that shouldn’t connect anymore. Even like this, there’s a structure to it. Not something I understand, but something I feel.
People move around us. Not many, but enough.
It hits all at once. They survived. Humans. Zmaj. They’re not hostile, but also not welcoming. Just… deciding what we are.
“Drazan.”
