“It reminds me of home.”
The words came out before he could consider them. Her hand tightened on his arm, but she didn’t press. She had learned that his memories needed space. Pressing for details sometimes made them retreat further into the fog.
They drove in comfortable silence for a long time, the white expanse of the polar ice spreading before them like a blank page waiting to be written. He let the quiet settle into his bones and the familiar landscape ease the tension that had coiled in his chest during the long hours of waiting.
“There were rumors in the station.”
He turned to look at her. “What kind of rumors?”
“GenCon.” Her voice was carefully neutral—the tone she used when she was thinking hard about something. “They’re investigating another seismic anomaly. Nothing like the one at our old claim, but unusual enough to draw attention.”
His spine straightened. “Location?”
“South. A long way south, near the equatorial mining belt.” She glanced at him. “Nowhere near us. But the timing is… interesting.”
Interesting.Not the word he would have chosen.
He closed his eyes, reaching out with senses that had become sharper over the past months. The ice beneath them hummed with its ancient songs, but he searched beneath it for thedistinctive vibrations that would indicate another chamber. Another sleeper.
Nothing. The southern territories were too far, too warm, and too different from the frozen depths that had preserved him. If there was another dragon awakening, it wasn’t one of his kind.
“I haven’t detected any indication of another… emergence,” he said carefully. “But my range has limits. Whatever GenCon is investigating, it’s beyond my ability to sense directly.”
“Could it be something else? Something other than a dragon?”
The question made something shift in his fragmented memories. Chambers of different sizes, different configurations, and different purposes.
“It could be many things,” he admitted. “I do not remember everything. But I know that the preservation network was extensive and designed to protect more than just the keepers of memory.”
“Extensive.” She frowned. “How extensive are we talking?”
Another flash. A map with lines connecting points across a world that no longer existed, circles marking locations that would have been unrecognizable even if his memory had been clear.
“Planetwide,” he said. “Though how much of it has survived, I cannot say.”
“Jesus.” She was quiet for a moment, processing. “If they all start waking up…”
“They will not wake all at once.” The words came with surprising certainty, emerging from a part of his mind that seemed more reliable than most. “The process is designed to be gradual.Sequential. One awakening creates conditions that eventually trigger another, but slowly. It could take decades.”
“You remember that?”
“I…” He paused, examining the knowledge. It didn’t feel like a memory, exactly. More like instinct—something encoded so deeply that it had survived even when everything else had been scattered. “I know it. The way I know that ice expands when it freezes. The way I know that your heartbeat means safety.”
She smiled at him. “That’s oddly poetic.”
“I learned from my mate.”
“I’m not poetic.”
“You are. You simply do not notice.” He reached out to brush his fingers against her cheek, feeling the softness of her skin against his scales. “You describe the mineral deposits like they are precious things waiting to be discovered. You talk to the equipment when you think I am not listening. You?—”
“Okay, okay.” She was blushing now, which pleased him immensely. “Point taken.”
They crested a ridge, and the familiar contours of their claim spread before them. The habitat Alina had arranged, upgraded significantly over the past few months, nestled against a rocky shelf, its environmental seals gleaming in the pale light. The mining rig stood nearby, compact and efficient, humming with the low-grade power consumption of standby mode.
Home,he thought. Not the home of his fragmented memories, with its vast ice halls and crystalline archives. But home nonetheless.
“Another flash came while you were gone,” he said as she guided the crawler towards the habitat’s vehicle bay. “More memory.”
