The lower east arch crouches beneath the oldest part of the outer wall, half-buried in red dust and shadow. Its stone lip cracked last hot season and was never repaired because repair takes workers, workers take water, and water takes arguments that last until everyone is too tired to fix the thing they were arguing about.
Now I stand beneath a broken arch with three water skins, two shade veils, one knife too small to inspire confidence, and one Cavern Zmaj who looks as if the open world has personally insulted him.
I pretend not to notice. Mostly.
Kavor stands just beyond the arch, where the City shadow thins into gray dawn. The first sun has not cleared the far ridge yet, but its light has begun bleeding across the flats, turning every stone edge red. Beyond him, Tajss stretches open and enormous.
Too enormous.
The outer flats roll away in cracked sheets of stone and hard-packed sand, broken by old ruin ribs jutting from the ground at odd angles. Farther out, the eastern sinkline cuts a darker seam through the land, not visible from here but still known. Felt. A place the City teaches children not to point at too long, as if attention itself might wake what sleeps beneath.
I have left the City before. Route-runners go where the City needs. To outer cisterns. Dead shelter markers. Broken shade walls. Once, I went three ridges out to help drag back a hunter who survived long enough to wish he hadn’t.
I know the surface. I know its rules. But that doesn’t stop my chest from tightening when the City wall rises behind me.
Move before the first heat. Find shade before second climb. Do not trust flat sand. Do not bleed where the wind can carry it. Do not run unless the ground moves first.
Inside the City, stone presses close. Heat moves in known currents. Shadows have names. Corridors remember my feet. Out here, there is too much sky.
It spreads above us, bruised red and violet before dawn, empty enough to swallow sound. Both suns wait below the horizon. The larger one paints its warning across the east before it arrives.
I pull the gear strap tighter across my chest. It cuts against my shoulder. I don’t mind. Pain is information. It tells me where my body ends and the morning begins.
Kavor’s wings sit tight against his back. They have been tight since we left the archive hollow. At first, I thought he was irritated. Then I thought he was listening to something. Now,watching him stand with one clawed hand close to the broken arch stone, his gaze moving too often across the open flats, I’m less sure.
He looks different outside. Not weaker. Altered. In the archive, he seemed built from the same pressure as the stone, dark and still and too aware of everything below us. Here, with the sky spreading its great empty mouth overhead, that stillness sharpens. His shoulders set harder. His tail moves once, low and controlled, before going still again.
Maybe Cavern Zmaj don’t like dawn. Maybe he’s thinking about zemlja. Maybe I’m looking too much. That last one is definitely true, so I look away.
Marut stands inside the arch with his arms folded, pretending he is not there to make sure we actually leave. Ila is beside him, thinner than shadow, holding a final slate against her chest. Adran isn’t here. Rosalind isn’t either. No Virn. No Syin.
Good. I’ve had enough leaders watching me walk toward danger.
“I added the third skin,” Marut says, as if he personally bled water into the thing.
I glance at the full skin hooked across Kavor’s gear.
“How heroic.”
His mouth tightens. “Try not to waste it.”
“Try not to waste the time we bought arguing for it.”
Ila coughs into her hand. It might be a laugh. Probably not. The City doesn’t like laughter near exits.
“You are carrying two days of report summaries. Nothing else from the archive leaves,” Marut says, narrowing his eyes.
“I know.”
“Those slates come back.”
“Everything wants to come back,” I say.
The words leave my mouth before I can decide if I mean them. Marut looks away first. Good. No one wants to bless an expedition like this. Blessings are just apologies dressed up before the body is gone.
Ila steps closer and holds out one final slate.
“Eastern death list.”
