Sera pushes herself upright with a wince. “Good.”
“Good?” I ask, staring.
“Certain people are careless.”
That line was mine, but now it is hers. Something in my chest breaks open just enough to hurt.
The seam ahead widens into a broken slope. Blue light pours up from below, strengthening with every pulse. Not the cold white-gray of the signal. True blue. Purple at the edges. Living light hidden beneath old dust for too long.
Air moves upward. Mineral sweet. Zemlja leavings. Epis. So much of it.
Sera turns toward the glow. I do too. The relief seam collapses behind us with a roar.
There is nowhere to go but down. The slope drops beneath our feet, and this time, neither of us has a route, a line, or enough stable stone to argue with gravity. I grab Sera by the waist. She grabs the sample pouch against my chest.
We fall. Not far enough to die. Far enough for the world to become blue.
We hit a slope of damp mineral dust and slide. I twist to take the worst of the impact, my wings flaring uselessly in too little space. Sera stays locked against me, one hand on my harness, one over the sample.
Stone rushes past. Blue light grows. The slope spits us into open air.
For one breath, we hang above a cavern large enough to swallow the City’s hunger. Then we drop onto a bed of soft, fresh zemlja leavings and mineral moss below.
The impact drives the air from my chest. Sera lands against me. Alive. Hurt. Alive.
I roll us to a stop and lift my head. The world below the City glows.
Blue-purple strands hang from the ceiling in curtains. Thick clusters climb the walls. Pools of faint light shimmer between ridges of fresh zemlja leavings and old stone channels. The remains of ancient structures rise half-buried inside the cavern, their cut lines threaded with living glow and black corruption both.
Epis.
More than the City could dream of. More than any starving person should see at once.
Sera lifts herself on one trembling arm. Her face is shaded blue by the glow. Her eyes widen. All the ration-math in her goes silent. For the first time since I met her, Sera looks at abundance and has no idea how to make herself smaller around it.
Then, high above us, the signal pulses through the old channels.
Once. Pause. Again.
Across the cavern wall, a curtain of blue epis flickers in answer. A black line cuts through the glow like a blade.
21
SERA
For one breath, I forget being hungry. The cavern glows around us in impossible blue. Not a flicker. Not a single pulse. Not one thin strand tucked behind stone like a secret too frightened to breathe. This is light enough to drown in.
Blue-purple strands hang from the ceiling in curtains, long and bright, trembling in a draft I can’t feel against my skin. Clusters climb the walls in thick, glowing mats, rooted in dark seams of old zemlja leavings and mineral veins. Soft, mossy growth spreads between ridges of fresh waste, pulsing faintly under dust and broken stone. Shallow pools catch the glow and return it shattered, blue over purple over silver-white, like the whole buried world has been storing breath for generations and finally remembered to exhale.
Epis. So much epis my mind refuses it. It’s too much.
Enough for fevered children. Enough for workers whose hands shake when they lift tools. Enough for Lysa’s children. Enough for Ila’s quiet anger. Enough for every ration line where people pretend they’re not counting how thin everyone else has become.
Enough.
The word breaks something inside me. There is no room in me for enough. Enough is a dangerous fantasy. Enough makes people stupid. Enough makes them soft enough to be robbed. But the cavern glows anyway.
I press my hand into something warm and wet, then jerk back. Kavor’s arm locks around my waist before I can overbalance.
