The Echo of Lakshmi.
Kimara's fingers gripped the leather binding. Hard. The golden letters had faded, but not her father's blood under her nails from cleaning his corpse yesterday.
Eighteen tomorrow. The silver collar had grown with her, patient as death. Now it would taste real poison for the first time.
Good.
The book stayed sealed. Just like everything else the masters kept from them.
She pressed harder against the binding until her thumb went white. Still nothing.
Her father had hidden this. Wrapped it in shame and old cloth, buried beneath work rags that reeked of submission. He'd never fought back. Never even raised his voice when the Surveillants spat on him.
Coward.
Kimara touched the emerald feathers along her scalp. The other Phisotians whispered freak behind her back. Called her broken. Wrong.
They were the broken ones. Blue feathers covering their bodies, blue eyes, blue souls crushed into powder. She burned green and gold while they faded into nothing.
Tomorrow, she'd enter the domes. Fight monsters. Bleed for crystals she'd never keep.
Eighty percent goes to the masters. Always eighty percent. They counted every fragment, weighed every shard. The outcomes were the same in every domes—predictable harvests for predictable slaves.
But Kimara wouldn't be predictable.
Mrs. Kelyn sobbed through the thin wall. Mourning her son before he'd even died. Jorik would probably last a week. Maybe two if he was lucky and kept his head down.
Kimara had no intention of keeping her head down.
Her father's last words echoed: "You are more than they tell you."
He'd been wrong about most things. But maybe not this.
She remembered watching him return from the domes, his Second Resonance barely glowing on his hand. Weak light for a weak man. The crystal he'd brought back was pathetic—cloudy, small, worthless. Just like the few dim shards he'd left her. The collar had punished him for his failure, poisoning him slowly while the masters took their share of nothing.
He'd died whispering apologies to air.
Kimara would die screaming defiance.
The Awakening Chamber tomorrow. Then straight to the domes. No training, no preparation. Just raw instinct and whatever Echo decided she was worth claiming.
Her emerald feathers caught the crystal lamp's glow. Different. Defective.
Perfect.
Let them call her broken. Broken things had sharp edges.
The night sounds faded. Dawn bells would ring soon. Her childhood would end, and her war would begin.
She held the sealed book against her chest. Whatever secrets it contained could wait. Tomorrow, she'd start making her own.
The masters expected another blue-feathered slave.
They were about to be disappointed.