The sample pouch still pulses between us, weak blue against his chest, protected beneath my bloody hand. His claws shake once, then close around the pouch.
He breathes. One controlled breath. Then another. The red in his eyes does not vanish, but he hears me. Good. That’s good.
The chamber cracks behind us. A deeper rumble answers from below. Natural this time.
Zemlja.
Drawn by sound, by pulse, by blood, by whatever screamed through the old channels. Kavor looks toward the passage. Then at my arm. Then at the sample.
“We run,” he says.
“No,” I say, because apparently blood loss hasn’t made me less unreasonable. “We run soft.”
For one impossible breath, his mouth almost curves. Then the floor drops beneath the dead epis bed, opening into darkness. Heat, dust, and old death rush up.
Kavor grabs my pack with one claw and secures the sample with the other. I clutch my bleeding arm against my ribs.
Together, we turn toward the only passage that is not yet breaking. The wrong rhythm pulses behind us. The zemlja answers below.
And for the first time, I let Kavor set the pace.
16
KAVOR
Blood changes the world.
Not because it is rare. Tajss is made of things that bleed, things that bite, and things that wait beneath sand and stone for the chance to turn warmth into meat.
Blood is not rare. Hers is.
Sera runs softly beside me, one arm clutched tight against her ribs, blood dark between her fingers. Too much. Not enough to kill if treated quickly. Enough to slow her. Enough to call predators. Enough to make every instinct in me sharpen until the passage ahead becomes a throat and I become teeth.
The red at the edges of my vision does not fade. It breathes.
I force my breathing slower. One breath. Another. She said the sample first. She cut through the thing reaching for the epis.
She put her bleeding hand over the pouch at my chest and forced her voice through pain because she saw what was rising in me. She should not have had to do that. She should not have had to bleed at all.
The passage bucks beneath us.
Behind, the dead chamber breaks apart in cracking groans. The wrong rhythm pulses through the old channels. Once. Pause. Again.
Below that, deeper, heavier, natural pressure answers.
Zemlja.
Drawn by sound. Blood. Vibration. The high scream of the gray tendril. Perhaps all of it.
I hold the sample pouch against my chest with one clawed hand, Sera’s pack in the other. My own pack is strapped tight, but the weight no longer matters. Only her pace matters.
Too fast. No. Not fast enough.
She stumbles on a shallow rise. My hand moves. Stops. There is no time for permission. There is no room for pride.
I catch her elbow before her wounded arm knocks stone. She hisses through her teeth, but she does not pull away.
Somehow, that is worse than resistance.
