His eyes remain on the off-world spike.
“Our females did not.”
My breath catches. He doesn’t look at me. Good because if he did, I might do something foolish. Touch his arm. Say something useless. Offer comfort like a cracked cup.
“All?” I ask.
The word feels cruel, but necessary. His throat moves once.
“All, in time. Some lived for years after. Long enough to teach. Long enough to grieve. Not long enough.”
No children. I know it before he says it. Something in my chest folds around that knowledge.
“No offspring after?” I ask.
“No.”
The tunnel seems to go very far away. No females. No children. No future.
The caverns kept them alive, then closed around the silence of what would never come next. Kavor’s voice remains controlled. Which makes it worse.
“We endured because that is what Cavern Zmaj do. Stone endures. Blood endures. Memory endures.” He pauses, and for the first time, the control thins. “But survival without young becomes a corridor with no door.”
I forget the wound in my arm. I forget the sample. I forget the old spike in the wall and the zemlja moving toward my home.
For one breath, there is only Kavor, kneeling in a dead channel beneath a starving City, carrying the weight of a people who chose freedom and still lost the future. His hand rests on the stone beside the off-world metal. Not touching it. Not touching me.
“The caverns kept us alive,” he says. “They did not give us a future.”
My throat hurts. I hate that. I hate the sudden, sharp wanting to put my good hand over his and tell him the future is not a thing anyone owns until it arrives. I hate that I know exactly how useless that would sound. I hate that part of me wants to say it anyway.
Instead, I look at the spike. Because we are both better with terrible things when we can point to them.
“So your people would see this and say the surface was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“And the surface would say what?” I ask.
His eyes flick to mine.
“Perhaps that the caverns chose death slowly and called it purity.” That surprises me and I let it show. He looks away. “My teachings are not the whole of Tajss.”
The admission costs him. I hear it in the roughness.
“But they’re yours.”
“Yes.”
“That matters.” He says nothing. Fine. I am apparently the one with more mouth at the moment. “The City has teachings too.”
His gaze returns to me. I should stop. This is not the place. Everything here is buried and trying to kill us, but maybe that makes it the perfect place.
“The City teaches that hunger is discipline,” I say. “That small portions mean good character. That not asking means strength. That if someone gives you more, you must have stolen it from someone weaker.”
Kavor goes very still. I keep my eyes on the spike because it’s easier than looking at him.
“We don’t say it like that. We say ration balance. Heat management. Long-term survival. Civic duty. We make charts so it looks less like shame.”
