The passage spits us onto the basin’s western rim, where the stone curls down toward a darker seam. There, the smell strengthens. Bitter. Mineral. Old waste baked and dried and still somehow fertile underneath.
Kavor crouches near the seam. I stay standing. Not because I am afraid. Because one of us should watch the sky, the rim, the basin floor, the path behind, the way shadows slide, and whether anything moves against them.
Also because crouching would put my face closer to whatever zemlja leavings smell like after seasons of heat, and I’ve yet to become that heroic. Kavor presses two claws near a crusted line.
“Old passage,” he says.
“Zemlja?”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Not old enough to be safe.”
“That’s not a number.”
“It is better than one.”
I glance down at him. “You and truth have a very inconvenient relationship.”
“I prefer true answers to neat ones.”
“People who say that usually have never had to balance a ration ledger.”
His gaze lifts to mine. For one strange breath, neither of us moves. Then he looks back at the seam.
“This way.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
“At least the pattern remains intact.”
He rises. “The sign is strongest there.”
He points toward a low break in the rim, where a shadowed hollow cuts beneath the stone lip. It isn’t large. Barely wide enough for me to crouch through. Kavor will have to turn his shoulders.
Something old has stained the stone around it darker than the rest. My throat tightens.
“That’s the first expected sign?” I ask.
“Yes.”
The word is too quiet and not reassuring.
We approach slowly. Soft steps. No talking. The whole world narrows to dark stone, bitter scent, and the strange, sudden pounding of my heart.
I don’t know what I expected. A glow spilling out like promise. Blue-purple strands clinging to the hollow’s underside. Proof that the City’s hunger has an answer. Proof that all those secrets were monstrous but not meaningless.
I tell myself not to want it. I fail.
The hollow waits beneath the rim. Kavor crouches first and goes very still. Not alert still. Not listening still. Worse. Empty still.
“What?” I ask.
He does not answer. The skin between my shoulder blades tightens.
