“Kavor.”
He reaches one claw into the hollow and scrapes dust away from the inner edge. Dry crust flakes under his touch. Beneath it is a tunnel. The stone inside is smooth and darker, webbed with mineral veins. Old zemlja sign. Old leavings. The sour-bitter scent of growth waiting to happen.
Everything is there. Everything except the blue. I drop to a crouch beside him and look into the dark. No glow. No strands. No pulse of impossible color waiting beneath the stone. Only dryness. Mineral crust. Dead shadow. My chest feels too small for my breath.
“This is the place?” I ask.
Kavor doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
The hollow has zemlja sign. Old leavings. Mineral crust. The sour-bitter scent of growth that should have happened. Everything needed for epis.
Except the telltale glow.
10
KAVOR
Everything epis needs. Except there is none.
Sera crouches beside me, staring into the old zemlja tunnel as if looking harder might make blue-purple light appear where there is only darkness, mineral crust, and shadow.
It does not.
The tunnel mouth waits beneath the basin rim, low and smooth, its inner stone worn by something vast. Time does not make zemlja paths harmless. It only teaches them patience.
Old leavings cling along the lower curve of the wall, baked into the stone in dark bands. Mineral veins run through them like pale bone through old flesh.
Sera’s breathing stays measured. The kind a body takes when the mind has struck pain and chosen function instead.
“This is the place?” she asks.
I do not answer because she already knows. Her fingers curl against her thigh, not touching the tunnel lip. Good. The soilhere is not soil. It is memory ground down. Waste. Heat. Old nourishment. The kind of richness epis should love.
The kind that once made worlds greedy.
No glow. No strands. No pulse. Sera leans closer.
“Sera.”
“I’m not touching it.”
“You say that about many things you should not touch.”
“That’s because you object to many things.”
“I object to death.”
“Death is very demanding on Tajss. You’ll need a better sorting method.”
The words are dry. Quick. Almost nothing. But she is still looking at the absence, not at me. The failed hope sits between us like a third presence, thin and starving and impossible to ignore.
I press two claws against the inner edge of the tunnel mouth. The stone is cool beneath the crust. Cooler than the open basin. The shape of the tunnel wraps around my hand, around my breath, giving sound shape again.
Close stone. Readable stone. Better. I try not to let my body show relief, but Sera sees. Her gaze flicks from my hand against the tunnel wall to my shoulders. I continue before she can ask.
“There should be anchor threads here,” I say.
“What are anchor threads?”
