“Not just black rot.”
“No.”
The wrong rhythm pulses again. A thin gray light flickers through the channels. Kavor shifts before I do. His body turns slightly, putting him between me and the dead bed.
I step around him and he gives me a look. I give him one back.
“Both are needed,” I whisper.
His nostrils flare, then he moves aside. Not much, but enough. I edge closer.
The channels converge beneath a cluster of blackened strands, then disappear into a crack running down the wall and into the floor. The dust there has been disturbed. Not by wind because there is no wind here. Not by feet because there are no tracks.
Something small has moved through the dust. Several somethings. Thin grooves. Too narrow for sismis. Too regular for insects. Too shallow for roots. They lead toward the sample’s glow under Kavor’s arm. My skin tightens.
“Kavor.”
“I see.”
The grooves shift. Not from the floor moving. The grooves themselves. Something gray and thread-thin slides beneath the dust. I stop breathing.
One tendril emerges. Not alive. Not dead. Ash-gray. Scentless. Jointed in tiny segments, like a metal insect pretending to be a root. It lifts toward the sample pouch. For one absurd moment, my brain refuses to understand what my eyes see. Then everything happens at once.
“Kavor!” I shout.
He spins back, claws flashing. The gray tendril snaps toward the blue pulse against his chest. I move without thinking.
Not smart. Not planned. Not careful.
I shove the sample pouch hard against Kavor’s chest with one hand and slash at the tendril with the quiet knife in the other.The blade catches. The tendril recoils. A scream tears through the chamber. Not loud. High. Inside the bones. The floor convulses.
Kavor grabs for me. Too late.
The dead epis bed tears free from the wall in a curtain of black strands and ash-gray threads. It collapses toward us like falling hair, like a net, like all the hope in the room rotting at once.
I twist away from the strands, keeping the sample pinned against Kavor’s chest.
Something lashes across my forearm. Fire opens from my wrist to my elbow.
I don’t scream.
The chamber tilts.
Kavor’s arm catches me around the waist this time. No hesitation, no permission, no space for pride. He hauls me back as the black strands hit the floor where my knees had been a breath before.
The wrong rhythm pounds through the stone. No. Not through the stone. From the gray thing. From the channels. From whatever is waking beneath this buried old-world ruin.
My forearm burns, wet. Kavor’s eyes drop to the blood. Everything in him goes still.
Not listening-still. Not fear-still. Predator-still.
“Kavor,” I say.
His gaze lifts to mine. Red rims his eyes. Oh. Bad. Very bad.
I press my bleeding arm against my chest and force my voice sharp enough to cut through whatever is rising inside him.
“Sample first,” I say. His jaw flexes. “Kavor.”
