My pulse is racing, breath tight as I try to force it quieter, slower, matching the stillness he locks into beside me.
“What—” I start.
His hand tightens on my arm once. It’s all I need to know to shut up and listen.
At first, there’s nothing. Just the scrape of grit against stone as the wind shifts through the narrow passage, quieter thanthe open dunes. Then movement, close and just ahead. I ease forward just enough to see past the edge of the rock.
They move into view at the far end of the cut, stepping through the narrow opening we were about to enter, like they were always meant to be there. The motions are too smooth, too controlled. It’s unnatural and unnerving.
There are three of them. Tall. Narrow. Their forms are wrapped in something that isn’t quite armor, isn’t quite organic, dark surfaces catching the red light of the twin suns in dull, shifting tones.
They move with no wasted motion. Each step is measured and exact. They don’t look around like they’re searching, but like they already know where everything is. My breath catches in my throat.
“Shit,” I whisper, barely shaping the word.
He doesn’t answer. Maybe he doesn’t know what it means. It’s a Common word with no direct Zmaj translation. I feel the shift in him, though. Every line of his body tightens, not in panic, but in preparation.
One of the figures pauses, like it’s reacting to something. It stops with a stillness that doesn’t feel natural. The others adjust around it without breaking formation, their paths shifting to maintain distance and coverage.
A pattern. Always a pattern. My mind latches onto it automatically, trying to map it, trying to understand?—
The paused figure turns its head. Slow. Deliberate, but not toward us. Toward the space just beyond where we’re hidden.
It’s close. Too close. My pulse spikes hard enough I’m sure they’ll hear it. I don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t?—
The figure holds there for a fraction longer. Then it continues, like whatever it checked… matched what it expected.
The others move with it, their formation tightening as they pass through the narrowest part of the cut. Right where we would have been if we’d taken one more step.
We weren’t almost caught. We were about to walk straight into them.
My fingers curl against the sand, grounding myself as they move past, each step carrying them farther down the passage, deeper into the path we abandoned.
They don’t speak. No sound of communication. No signals I can see, but they stay perfectly aligned, spacing constant, movement uninterrupted. Like a system. This isn’t a patrol or a search. It’s an execution team.
I look at Kaelreth. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t even shifted his weight, but there’s something different. It’s not just focus or readiness. It’s closer to the surface. He hasn’t eased his grip on me. If anything, it’s stronger. It’s not crushing, but it is absolute.
The last of the figures disappears around the bend, fading from sight but not from the space they leave behind. I wait. One breath. Two. Three. Nothing. No return. No sudden reversal. Just absence.
I exhale slowly, careful not to make a sound, easing back from the edge of the rock.
“They knew,” I whisper.
It doesn’t feel like a guess. His gaze shifts to me for a fraction of a second, then back to the passage.
“They expected.”
His voice is low. Controlled. Nothing uncertain in it. That means they didn’t miss us. They accounted for where we would be. My stomach tightens.
“That wasn’t a patrol,” I say.
“No.”
I glance toward the direction they went, the path we almost took, then forward. Toward the tighter, more broken terrain he forced us into instead. Toward the direction that felt worse, more dangerous, until now.
“They’re not searching,” I say, the shape of it locking into place.
“They already know where to look.”
