Sera jumps the first break, and pain steals her landing. I see it in the collapse of her shoulder, the half breath she loses, the way her knees soften. She does not fall.
Good. Good.
Then the wall bursts open behind us. A slab of cut stone punches outward, striking the dust shelf between us.
Sera is ahead of it. I am not.
The impact hurls shards into my path. I pivot, wings scraping the wall, sample clutched tight. The shelf under my right foot crumbles.
For one breath, there is no floor. Only pressure. Dust. Blue light. Sera’s shout.
“Kavor!”
I catch the slanted rib with one hand.
Claws bite.
Pain flares through my shoulder.
My lower body swings over the opening where the floor vanished into blue-lit darkness. The sample pouch slams against my chest. Stone shards rain past me, vanishing below. Sera is turning back.
No.
“Sera, go.”
She ignores me. Of course she does.
She drops to one knee on the rib above me, her injured arm pressed uselessly to her side, her good hand reaching.
Stupid. Brave. Mine.
No.
Not mine.
Chosen or not, she is injured, and the floor is dying.
“Do not,” I snarl.
“Shut up.”
She cannot pull me up. She knows it. I know it. But she is not reaching for me. She is reaching for the sample strap cutting across my chest.
“What are you?—”
“The strap is caught.”
I look down. She is right.
One of the leather loops holding the sample pouch is snagged on a jagged metal filament exposed by the breaking wall. If I pull hard, the pouch tears free, or worse, the sample spills into the dust channel.
Sera braces her boot against the rib and leans farther down. Too far. The red rises again.
“Sera.”
“Hold still.”
“The shelf beneath you?—”
