I scrape dust from the inner curve of the channel. The crust breaks away in flakes. Beneath it, the stone is dark with old nourishment. Pale mineral veins. Smooth tunnel-worn underlayer where the zemlja passage must have pressed near enough to change everything above it, but no glow. No strands.
Sera’s silence sharpens. I scrape deeper. There. A line along the seam. Not blue or purple. Gray. Ash-gray, threaded through the mineral where epis should have anchored.
“That’s not normal,” Sera says.
“No.”
“What is it?”
I rub the gray dust between my claws. No scent. Nothing. Impossible.
Everything has scent. Stone. Heat. Dead growth. Old leavings. Fear. Water. Hunger. Sera’s skin where my hand held her wrist. This has none.
My wings tighten. The channel mouth presses close in front of me, but behind my back, the sky is still open, wide and watching. I do not like this place. Not the open. Not the dark. Not the space between.
“I do not know,” I say.
For once, she does not argue with the answer.
A faint sound shivers through the channel. A tiny spill of dust falls from somewhere deeper inside the old passage.
Sera and I both go still. Then another sound. Farther in. Soft. Measured. Once. Pause. Again.
Sera’s eyes meet mine. She knows the rhythm.
“We leave,” I say.
She does not argue. We back away from the channel mouth, soft and slow, each step placed as if the ground has ears. The gray dust clings to my claw. No scent. No glow. No life.
Behind us, inside the collapsed cistern channel, the darkness gives one more quiet pulse.
And the ash-gray vein goes black.
11
SERA
When Kavor says we leave, I don’t argue. This might be the most frightening thing that’s happened so far.
We back away from the collapsed cistern channel, soft and slow, each step placed like the ground is listening with teeth. Maybe it is. Maybe everything on Tajss listens. Stone. Sand. Heat. Hunger. Alien males who hear your pulse change and then pretend they didn’t.
I keep my eyes on the ground because my body likes tasks better than despair. Dark shelf, safe. Pale stone, avoid. Dust slope, too soft. Cracked lip, no. Shadow leaning west, useful for six breaths, maybe eight if the sun keeps climbing slow.
It won’t. The sun never does anything slowly once it decides to kill.
Kavor moves beside me, silent and too aware. I feel him not reaching for me. That’s an absurd thing to feel. The absence of a hand. The restraint of claws. The space beside my body where he could interfere and doesn’t.
It bothers me. Everything about him bothers me. Especially when he learns.
Behind us, somewhere deep in the old passage, I hear dust shifting once more. I don’t turn because turning gives fear shape.
“We need shade,” Kavor says.
“I know.”
“Soon.”
“I know that too.”
