“Not empty. Wrong,” she says.
“Correct.”
Her throat moves. “Then we need it.”
The words return her to purpose. Safer ground. Need wears armor. Want cannot.
“We need to understand it before we touch it,” I say.
She blinks, and the sharpness comes back. “I wasn’t planning to lick the glow.”
“I did not think you were.”
“You had a look.”
“I have many looks.”
“Most of them object to things.”
“Yes.”
She lets out a breath that almost becomes laughter. Good. I want that sound again. No. I want too many things.
The heat outside continues its slow violence. The shade line at the shelter mouth retreats by a finger’s width. The fused stone above us ticks softly as it expands. We wait because the surface allows nothing else.
The blue light remains because it has nowhere else to go. Then the ground beneath the rear crack shifts. Not a pulse. Not the wrong rhythm. A settling. Soft. Deep. Old stone remembers a wound. Dust spills from the top of the crack. Sera’s gaze snaps up.
“Back,” I say.
She is already moving. Smart. Always smart.
She slides along the wall toward the opening, keeping low, but the heat outside drives a glare across her face. She stops before the threshold.
Not out. Not back. She is trapped between two dangers. The rear crack widens with the sound of glass biting itself. A thin shardfalls inward, striking the shelter floor and breaking near my claw. Blue spills brighter through the gap.
Sera looks at me. I look at the crack. The opening is wider now. Still too narrow for my shoulders. Still possible for Sera’s. Her eyes sharpen with the same thought.
“No,” I say.
“We are not doing that again.”
“We will continue doing this until you stop trying to enter places I cannot follow,” I say.
“Then become smaller.”
“No.”
“See? You’re not even trying,” she says.
Another crack climbs the fused wall. Not toward the ceiling. Good. Down.
The rear seam opens a little more, revealing a slanted passage beyond. It does not look like an old service crack. It looks like the edge of a tunnel sealed by fused stone and time.
Blue light glows below. Air moves through the opening. Cooler. Mineral-rich. Bitter with zemlja leavings. Alive. Sera inhales. I hear it catch.
“There’s a passage,” she says.
“There is.”
