The morning began not with birdsong, not with peace, but with something far holier.
The sizzle of meat.
Inside Zy's tent, I stirred awake. My body still ached from yesterday's training, but my stomach? My stomach was waging a war.
Grrrrrrrroooowwwl!
The rumble was so loud it actually rattled the loose stakes in the tent walls.
I sat up, rubbing my face, hair sticking up in every direction. "Ugh… what time is it…?" My voice was cracked, still half asleep until the smell hit me.
That smell.
That divine, glorious, fat dripping, life redeeming smell.
My eyes snapped open, pupils dilating like wild animal's. I practically leapt out of the bedroll.
"IS THAT… MEAT?!"
Without even thinking, I blasted out of the tent flap like some kind of deranged caveman, nearly tripping over my own boots. The sun smacked me right in the face the second I stepped out
"AGHHHHHH!" I hissed, shielding my eyes. The star wasn't just bright it was massive, its rays like a holy flashbang detonating across the camp.
Through squinted eyes, I scanned left. Right.
The smell was stronger now, coating the air like perfume. My heart was racing. My veins pulsed. Drool actually leaked from the corner of my mouth.
And then
Nothing.
No meat.
No skewers.
No glorious roasted beast waiting to be devoured.
"WHA-?! WHERE'S ALL THE MEAT?!" My voice cracked so hard it echoed through the camp.
And then I saw them.
Zy and Rayu.
Sitting cross legged on a log. Calm. Collected.
Munching.
Chewing.
Juicy grease glistening on their fingers as they tore into thick cuts of Earth Wolf steak.
Right beside the fire pit lay the evidence, burnt green fur, still smoking.
I froze.
My fists clenched. My jaw locked.
The air itself vibrated with my rage.
"You guys…" My voice trembled. "YOU GUYS ATE EARTH WOLF MEAT… AND DIDN'T LEAVE ANY FOR ME?!"
"Mmph m mph calm down, p pretty boy," Zy mumbled, cheeks puffed out with meat like a chipmunk.
She flicked her fork casually toward me, letting grease drip from the end, each droplet sizzling on the dirt like acid. "I saved you some. It's by my Wing Pack."
I snapped my head toward her gear.
My eyes locked in. Zoomed.
Slow motion. Dramatic music.
Her Wing Pack sat against a rock, gleaming faintly in the morning sun.
I marched over with deliberate, heavy steps. My glare could've froTaren lava.
"…Uh huh?" I said, voice low, calm, terrifying. "Where's the meat?"
I leaned against the tree, folding my arms.
"All I see… is your dumb jet pack."
"It's not a jet pack, it's a Wing Pack, you meat obsessed moron," Zy shot back, chewing slower now, deliberately taunting me with every exaggerated bite. "If it's gone, then some animal probably snatched it."
I looked again.
Empty.
No meat.
No steak.
Gone.
My jaw dropped. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SOME ANIMAL?! YOU LET MY PRECIOUS MEAT GET STOLEN?!"
Rayu, silent as a monk this whole time, suddenly cracked.
"Pfft HAHAHAHA!" He doubled over, clutching his stomach, his usually composed golden eyes tearing up from laughter. "This is the first time I've seen someone go this far over breakfast!"
"THIS ISN'T FUNNY!" I roared, cartoon veins popping across my forehead like angry rivers. "THAT WAS MY EARTH WOLF MEAT!"
Zy sighed, wiping her fingers on a cloth, as if this whole situation was beneath her. "Relax." She smirked, slapping her Wing Pack lightly. "If you want more, hunt another wolf. They travel in packs…"
Her words echoed in my skull like a war drum.
A vision overtook me: a mountain of steaks stacked to the heavens. Juices dripping, rivers of flavor cascading. Me, standing at the peak, holding a fork like Excalibur.
"ALRIGHT THEN!" I declared, flames burning in my eyes. "I'LL SLAY A WHOLE PACK! I'LL MAKE A MOUNTAIN OF STEAK AND EAT UNTIL I EXPLODE!"
The world went silent.
Zy and Rayu just started.
Sweat drops rolled down their temples anime style.
Rayu muttered, deadpan. "This idiot's stomach is going to be the death of us."
Before I could escalate my carnivore manifesto further, I remembered.
"Oh yeah hey, what happened with that light last night?"
Rayu sighed, standing with his arms crossed, the firelight casting sharp shadows across his face.
"That light is what knocked you out, idiot."
"…Oh."
He jabbed a finger toward the cube lying beside the campfire.
"Anyway. Pick it up. It finished starting up."
The cube hummed faintly as I approached.
I crouched, scooping it up with my left hand
WHRRRRRMMMM!
The thing vibrated violently, glowing brighter and brighter until
BOOOOOOOM!
A flash consumed my vision.
My ears rang. My body felt weightless.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn't in camp anymore.
The world around me had transformed into a glowing, endless grid. Blue lines stretched into infinity, like I'd been swallowed by some virtual cosmos.
I staggered, clutching my head. "What the- where am I?!"
"You are inside the Training Cube,Taren," Zy's voice echoed faintly, distorted as if speaking from another realm. "It's all a hologram. Your first opponent… will be a wolf."
I grinned. "A wolf? Easy. I used to wrestle dogs when I was little."
The cube hummed.
The ground trembled.
And then
BOOOOOOOOM!
A monstrous shadow emerged.
A wolf no. A titan. Bigger than three houses stacked together, eyes glowing red, breath fogging the air like steam engines.
My grin snapped. "…I spoke too soon."
I dove behind a holographic tree.
"A TITAN WOLF?!"
The Training Cube hummed louder.
Each glowing gridline vibrated like a plucked string, the entire space reverberating with an eerie hum.
Then
Step.
The sound of a colossal paw striking the ground shook the entire arena.
BOOOOOOM! Dust and light scattered into the air like a miniature earthquake.
My jaw unhinged. My legs nearly gave out.
This… wasn't just some hologram doggy.
This was a nightmare made flesh.
A wolf bigger than any building I'd ever seen, its fur bristling like a field of steel blades. Its glowing eyes locked onto me cold, intelligent, hungry.
"Uh… Zy?!" I croaked, peeking out from behind the flickering hologram tree.
"Y-You sure this thing's, uh… y'know… safe?"
"Safe?" Zy's voice echoed from outside the cube, faint but sharp.
"Nothing's safe here. That's the point."
Rayu's voice cut in, calm as a monk meditating in a volcano.
"Survive, or you'll never survive out there."
The Titan Wolf snarled, and the sound wasn't just a growl.
It was a storm, a landslide, a hurricane compressed into one deafening roar.
RRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
The holographic ground itself cracked under its sheer presence.
"…Yeah, okay," I whispered, gripping my daggers tight. "I'm dead."
I forced my shaking legs forward.
Daggers up. Heart hammering. My throat was so dry it was like swallowing sand.
"Alright,Taren. Just… just aim for the boulder. Distract it. Simple plan. Simple."
The wolf's gaze snapped to me instantly.
Its eyes glowed brighter two burning suns, locked, unblinking.
"…Ah crap."
The ground shook. The beast lowered its massive frame. Muscles tensed.
And then
FWOOOOOOOM!
It lunged.
Its entire body blurred from stillness to terrifying speed in a single heartbeat.
"TOO FAST!" I screamed, legs pumping, desperately dashing toward the boulder.
The wolf's breath scorched the back of my neck. Its paws slammed down just inches behind me, each one carving a crater.
My daggers felt like toothpicks.
My lungs burned.
Every second was stretched into eternity.
"FASTER! FASTER!" I screamed inside my skull, eyes wild. "I have to move faster or I'm wolf chow!"
And then something snapped.
The cube pulsed with a blinding flash.
Suddenly, my body moved.
Not by my will, but as if something else had grabbed the reins.
My legs blurred. My arms cut through the air like whips.
The world warped around me.
One step.
Another.
And then
CRACK!
The sound of lightning splitting the air.
I shot across the cube like a bullet, leaving a streak of light in my wake.
My body wasn't running anymore.
I was flying across the ground, my feet barely skimming the surface.
Rayu's voice boomed outside the cube.
"…What the hell?"
Zy's gasp followed. "No way…!"
But inside, I wasn't celebrating.
I wasn't thinking.
I was tripping.
WHAM!
My foot caught the holographic floor. I flipped. Spun. Slammed face first into the grid.
"Ooooowwwwww!" I groaned, drool smearing across glowing blue tiles.
The wolf's shadow fell over me.
I snapped my head up just in time to see its gaping maw descend.
"NOPE!"
Instinct roared inside me. My arm shot forward, dagger in hand.
THUNK!
The blade flew.
A perfect throw.
It slammed right into the Titan Wolf's glowing eye.
The beast roared in agony, staggering back.
Its paw slammed against the boulder I'd been aiming for, cracking it in half.
Dust. Debris.
A chance.
I scrambled up the crumbling boulder, every muscle screaming.
The Titan Wolf thrashed, blind in one eye, snapping its jaws at empty air.
"Okay, okay, okay…!" I muttered, legs pumping up the rock. "Climb the boulder. Jump. Kill the monster. Easy plan. Totally not suicidal. Totally fine."
The top of the boulder shook beneath me as it gave way.
I launched forward
Time slowed.
The wolf's glowing eyes widened.
My body twisted mid air, daggers gleaming in both hands.
"RAAAAAAGHHHHH!"
SLAM!
The daggers plunged deep into its skull.
The beast howled earth shaking, soul rattling.
For a moment, I thought I'd won.
For a moment, I was a hero.
And then
FSSSSHHHH!
The hologram shattered.
The entire wolf exploded into shards of light, dissolving beneath me.
Suddenly, there was nothing to stand on.
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
I plummeted.
The ground rushed up to meet me.
BAM!
"OW OW OW MY HEEEEAD!" I howled, curled up in pain. The cube's glow flickered out, leaving me sprawled face down in the dirt outside. The cube powered down with a final hum.
Silence fell.
Rayu stood with arms crossed, golden eyes locked on me like I'd just murdered someone.
Zy sprinted over, panic written across her face.
"Taren! Are you okay?!" She grabbed my arm, hauling me up.
"Y-Yeah…" I groaned, rubbing the fresh lump on my head. "I just hit my head a little…"
Rayu's voice cut sharp as a blade.
"How did you run that fast?"
"H-Huh?" I blinked.
"No human can run that fast." His eyes narrowed, unreadable.
"I-I don't know!" I stammered. "I just thought about going faster and then I did "
"That's impossible."
He turned sharply, vanishing into his tent.
Zy's voice was softer, almost worried. "He's right,Taren. What you did… It's humanly impossible."
I swallowed hard, my chest tight. "…So what am I, then?"
Rayu returned a moment later.
Something wooden whistled through the air
THWACK!
"OW!" I yelped, clutching my head again.
A wooden sword bounced into my lap.
"…A bokken?!"
"Get up." Rayu stepped into the clearing, stance firm, blade raised.
"We're training. Now."
Zy's eyes widened. "Go easy on him, Rayu "
"He doesn't need it easy," Rayu cut her off coldly.
"He needs control. And strength. Or this world will eat him alive."
I sighed, gripping the bokken with both hands.
"Well… my mom was from Japan, so I guess I'm genetically licensed for this, right?"
Rayu's glare didn't soften.
"Fight."
Rayu doesn't smile. Rayu never smiles when the world is trying to eat you.
He plants his feet in the dirt, the muscles in his calves and thighs coiling like thicker rope. The air around him feels quieter, as if the wind itself is holding its breath. He hands me the bokken with a motion that says: This is not play.
"Watch me," he says. There's a flatness to his voice that leaves no room for argument.
The first strike is deliberate. He moves like someone who understands weight not just of weapons, but of worlds. The wooden blade whistles through the air, and it's not loud, exactly; it's predatory. It lands against my shoulder with an impact that blooms into fire. I flinch, arms knocking against my ribs.
"Again," Rayu says.
I stand. My legs tremble. I grip the bokken too tightly; the wood squeaks against my palms.
He steps forward, slowly, accentuating the smallest things: how my feet should be planted, how my knees should breathe with the movement, how the bokken's balance is a conversation between wood and wind. He shows me the arc, the tiny pivot of a hip that redirects momentum. He hits. I block. He hits. I failed.
Every strike is a punctuation mark. Every fall is a little lesson. Rayu's bokkenards each one not an attempt to hurt me, but to map out the edges of my ignorance.
"Too tense," he says after a particularly humiliating thwack lands on my forearm. "Everything you do snaps like a trapped string. Your speed comes from force. Force without control is a weapon that cuts your own hand."
I try to breathe in. The wind feels like grit in my lungs. I focus on the rhythm he's setting: inhale, shift, exhale, strike. For one perfect moment, my body obeys. My feet slide; my bokken halves the air in the same place his did, the motion mirrored like a photograph. My strike lands. The world feels small and right.
Rayu nods once. That single nod is heavier than any compliment.
Then he intensifies. The strikes come faster not because he wants to hurt me more, but because practice must become chaos, then order. He's teaching me how to be unbreakably calm in a storm of hits. He's teaching me how to place a step before a step happens, how to feel the gap in time where speed can be channeled rather than exploded.
I miss. Hard. I get clocked in the ribs. I get swept off my feet. I taste copper. Each hit sculpts some new bruise into my skin, a map of the day.
After half an hour that feels like a week, he freezes our practice with a sudden, quiet command. We stand opposite each other, our chests heaving, the bokken a line between us.
"Now," Rayu says, "run at me."
It's a test and a trap. My heart stabs a little. I run.
Not because I want to, but because in the cube the other day, something in me moved like lightning, and now Rayu is making me face that jagged piece of myself.
I sprint. My body remembers the flash steps from before and wants to tear forward, to split the world into streaks. I feel the old impossible speed thrum in my muscles like a caged animal.
This time, Rayu doesn't bring the bokken up to block or to hit. He moves his feet, angles his hips, the barest pivot. He doesn't meet my speed with force; he guides it with inevitability.
My shin slams against his leg. My balance flips. I tumble forward, hands skidding. I expected pain, but instead there is a numb clarity: the world has edges and I am learning the correct way to slide along them.
Rayu helps me up with the gentle cruelty of a teacher who knows the student will whine but must learn. Zy watches, chewing her lip, eyes soft with worry.
"You didn't control it," Rayu says quietly. "You didn't decide where it went. It propelled you. If you cannot decide when that speed manifests, you will be as dangerous to your friends as you are to your enemies."
I nod because there's nowhere else to put my head. The truth settles heavily: something inside me is not humanly normal. It sprinted without my say so. I can't deny it; I can only try to bend it until it becomes useful.
Zy busts out laughing then, unexpectedly, and that laugh is a relief like a crack in a dam. "At least you're fast," she says, smirking. "Imagine the dinner you'll catch."
Rayu's jaw tightens. "Speed without discipline is death." He turns to me, looking like he's decided something. "We train again at dusk. You will run laps with weights. You will learn to breathe while you move. You will make your body obey your mind."
I swallow. "I will." The promise tastes like dust and iron, but I mean it. I have to mean it.
Later, while we patch up my bruises and let the tension ease like a tide going out, Zy fills in the blanks about how Earth became... this.
She speaks in a slow voice, the kind that knows stories are weapons and medicines both. Her hands move as she speaks, fingers tracing shapes in the night air: "a nebula, a wave, a system tearing."
"A long time ago," she says, "the solar system drifted into a denser band of space, a nebula thick with charged particles and raw energy. The planets… they didn't just sit through it. They reacted. Space is stubborn like that." She chuckles softly, but there's no humor in the memory. "Radiation spiked. Atmospheric chemistry changed. Gravity didn't exactly change in your bones, but the way growth responded to stimuli broke the rules. Some animals mutated."
"Not humans?" I ask.
"Not in the same way," Rayu answers. He's by the fire, sharpening a small blade with movements that seem meditative. The sparks fly like tiny constellations. "Structures humans made, machines… they resisted. Humans themselves for reasons we still don't fully understand were spared the most dramatic physical changes. But the biological cascade hit everything else. Creatures grew, mutated, fused with traits from other species or elements, or gained abilities that made them apex predators in a world that had to relearn itself."
Zy pulls out a strip of hide that they must have cured once, and she points at small paintings on it crude diagrams of beasts. "Earth Wolves, first on the list. Fast, predatory, pack hunters. Then, there are water spiders the size of fishing trawlers that can walk across lakes like islands. Lava sharks that swim through molten flows. Air monkeys that glide on thermal updrafts. Lightning cats, you love them, remember? whose purrs can arc electricity through the air for a half second strike."
I grin at the memory of her earlier teasing about my love for cats, but she looks solemn. "These animals wiped out ninety nine percent of human settlements at first. We survived because of technology and because we adapted. We learned to fly, to live underground, to build pockets that the beasts cannot practically breach. But the world didn't become safe. It became… honest. Brutal. The old lines were erased, and a new rule set emerged."
Rayu's voice grows distant then, like he's listing a ledger of grief. "We lost entire cities. We lost families. We also learned to fight with new rules. We learned to use the environment. We learned to survive as part of the system, not on top of it."
Zy stares into the embers. "And then came the storms. When the climate started to hyper react in localized pockets, sandstorms like the one in the distance became what we call Titan Sandstorms storms that gather kinetic and electric charge, that move like walls, that swallow horizons."
I feel the distance in my chest between the story and the present getting thinner. I look to the horizon without realizing it, and there somewhere out past the hills the sky is a little darker, a little yellow near the edge. A far off thunder rolls.
Rayu's hand brushes the cube beside him. It hums faintly in the quiet. "The cube lets us train without death. It teaches reflexes, not survival's full mess. Real survival is messy."
Zy snorts. "And gross mostly gross." She flicks away a pile of fat smelling residue from earlier and grins. "You'll get used to the gross."
The three of us sit in the circle of the campfire, a fragile triangle that feels, in this bleeding world, a kind of home.
It begins as a rumor of light.
At first, I thought it's the sun, then I thought it's a far off blaze. The horizon thickens like someone pressing a thumb against glass: the skyline turns from blue to a sickly amber. The wind changes direction. The shadows lengthen and become golden, not because the sun moves, but because the whole world tilts toward sand and grit.
"Is that" Zy breathes.
Rayu stands quick, the knife in his hand now a compass. His face smooths into the kind of focus I've never seen before. "Sandstorm. Titan class. Coming fast."
The air goes still for a heartbeat, and then everything starts to move at once. Small things: insects that forget their steps, dust devils rising like nervous fingers. Big things: the tall grass bows and then snaps back. The sun sneezes behind a veil.
Sound arrives like a wave. At first, it's a low rumble, like a train a valley away. Then the rumble becomes layered with a thousand freight engines, a chorus of a thousand thunderclaps and in the center of it, something crackles. Lightning starts to punch through the mass like an animal waking.
We don't have time to stand froTaren. Rayu's every motion is military efficiency. Zy tosses supplies into packs with a practiced speed that looks like muscle memory. I realize shakily that we are always training for this. Not because we like danger, but because life here demands rehearsal.
"Pack everything," Rayu says. His voice is calm, the calm of a surgeon. "Cube. Food. Wings. Anything that floats or burns or gives you more time."
Zy snaps a strap across a case of ceramic canisters, her fingers moving like practiced hands threading beads. "Grab the cube!" she yells to me as she slings her wings. She's already strapped into them; little servomotors whir, ready.
I snatch the humming cube without thinking. It vibrates faintly, warm in my palm. My heart pounds against it like a second mind.
Outside, the wall of yellow moves. Up close, it isn't just sand, it's a jumble of shards, of micropebbles that bite like splinters and of static electricity that sparks in the air. Inside it, lightning forks between clumps of dust like fish swimming in a river of fire.
"It's moving faster than I like," Rayu mutters. The wind hits us, and for a second the world is absolutely violent sand bites skin, and the sound is bone deep. I can feel the grit slicing the little hairs on my arm, and it stings.
"WE'RE NOT GONNA OUTRUN IT!" I shout.
Rayu snaps his cloak off and his wings unfurl like ancient banners. They're enormous in the way a mountain is enormous: solid, inevitable. Zy's mechanical wings whir and beep, tips glowing blue as they initialize. The camp becomes a blur of straps, fabric, and flaring metal.
"Grab on!" Rayu orders. "Anything! Hold on!"
I grab his coat. I grab the cube. The world lurches.
We lift. The gust tears at us like an animal. I can feel the storm trying to tug me back, hands made of wind.
For a second, we are rising above the dirt that used to feel safe. The sand below churns in waves the size of houses. Lightning dances in the wake of our ascent like an offended god. The horizon itself seems to fall away in a flood of gold.
Then something moves inside the sand, a silhouette like a backbone, crawling slowly but with intent. I swear I see the curve of something massive, like a worm made of dunes itself. It's a shape that makes my throat go cold.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" I scream.
"Nothin' you want to meet!" Zy yells, but I see the pale of her knuckles where she grips the wing controls tight enough to whiten.
The storm eats the hill beneath us. We are not winning. The wind is a living thing. The world is trying to tear us down by force.
Rayu's wings thrash. Each beat is a cannon. He's pushing with strength that belongs in a myth. But the storm is not only faster, it's smarter, too. It wraps around us, trying not to let go.
"We can't hold it!" Zy shouts, engine notes spiking like stress. "Our servos are overheating!"
Rayu's jaw clicks. "There's only one option left."
I feel my stomach drop. That wording the single option left it never means anything easy.
"UNDERGROUND?" I blurt because I cannot think of anything else.
"No," Rayu says. He looks at me like the world is a plan and we are the instruments. "We dive."
The idea is madness, and also the only thing that tastes like sanity. We're not going to outfly a planet sized storm. The only way through is under it.
Rayu folds his wings with a movement that shows how many times he's done this in a life I don't know. The wing bones fold flush against a back like a bird tucking its feathers. Zy yanks a lever, and the mechanical wings retract with a whining squeal as protective plates slide across the servos like armor closing.
We point our noses down. The world is a strobe of gold light and rock. For a half second, I think, absurdly, that we're going to free fall forever. The sky becomes a tunnel.
"Hold tight!" Zy screams.
The descent is not a graceful entry. The storm grabs at us with teeth. Sand slaps like waves. I can feel the air pressure change in a way that makes my eardrums ache. We strike the side of the hill, and the impact is violent like being struck by the side of a mountain. Rayu yells something, and then we are passing through a thin seam of glowing blue and crackly light a crystalline fault in the earth that glows from within like a vein of lightning.
For a moment there is panic wings flare, and the world feels like it's tearing but then we break through into an otherworldly space.
We crash land.
Not the smash and burn of a scorching impact, but a long, liquid fall into something that feels alive and welcoming. We drop through a shimmering curtain of light and land in cold, electric blue water that shocks on contact, not because it burns, but because it sings.
I remember nothing of the sky for a few instants, only the taste of salt and static, an odor like ozone and minerals. The cave is large enough to be its own world. The ceiling glitters with shards tiny lenses that scatter the blue into a thousand slow, lazy motes. The walls pulse faintly with bioluminescence, veins that look like constellations in slow motion.
For a prolonged moment, we float, the world making soft noises, creaks of wood, the faint tick of metal cooling, the distant rumble of a storm outside. I feel the cube in my hand throb more slowly, almost relieved.
"We're… under." Zy exhales, the words small and incredulous.
Rayu keeps his eyes scanning, wings half unfolded, ready. He points into the dim where the water's surface breaks into shimmer and there are strange shapes, like plants made of filament and glass. Little blue motes drift up like jellyfish, leaving ghostly trails as they move.
For a while, we just breathe. The world inside the cave absorbs the storm's shouting like it never happened. It feels sacred in a way I don't have words for.
We climb out on slick stones. My legs wobble like newborn calves. Zy presses a pack of cloth to my forehead the salt makes it sting, but in a good way. Rayu makes a perimeter, notes in the tiny gestures of a man who knows the difference between beautiful things and traps.
I look around and find my eyes linger on the water. It's not only blue it's an electric, almost circuit board blue. Little arcs of light trace patterns across its surface as if some invisible current sketches tiny maps. When something moves in the water, it leaves a trail that glows for a breath before fading.
"Is this… safe?" I whisper.
Zy shrugs, and I can't tell if she's nervous or thrilled. "Depends on what you mean by safe."
The cave expands in corridors, the walls patterned with veins of that same luminous mineral. Stalactites drip slow, steady pearls that sizzle faintly when they strike a rock. The dripping is like a clock.
We find a narrow ridge that looks like a place we can make camp that doesn't threaten with immediate death. Zy sets up a small heater from a cylinder, the hiss of its flame oddly domestic against the otherworldly backdrop. Rayu checks his gear, his eyes far and tired.
I sit on a stone and look at my hands. They feel oddly human again, despite the speed that has lodged itself like a live coal inside me. I press my fingertips into the cube, and it cools beneath my palm.
Zy tosses me a scrap of meat she'd managed to salvage, not the Earth Wolf of legend, but something cured and salty, and it tastes like the past. "Eat," she says. "You looked like you were going to dissolve into hunger back there."
I chew slowly. The flavor is a tiny, fierce comfort in the middle of everything. Rayu watches me, then looks toward the cave mouth as if bracing for whatever might follow.
There's a sound, thin and distant, like a throat being cleared. I look up. From the deeper darkness of the cave, something moves not the storm, not the world outside, but a presence. A pair of pale eyes reflect our light momentarily and then vanish.
"Welcome to subterranean hospitality," Zy says, smiling too widely. "Be grateful we made it in one piece."
I force a laugh. It comes out thin. The cave is beautiful and also an answer: a place to breathe between storms. A place to be alive long enough to plan the next move.
Outside, the Titan Sandstorm bullies the horizon, but under here, the world is softer, lit by slow blue fire. For the first time in hours, I realize how tired I am.
Rayu sits across from me and reaches for the cube. "We'll stay until dawn," he says. "We need to move once it passes. The sand won't stay angry forever but when it moves, it moves like an avalanche. We'll peek at the map next.Taren. Your speed? Remember what we taught you today. Breathe. Decide. Control."
I swallow and nod. Blue motes float like slow meteors. The cave holds our breaths like a hand cupping water. And I saw a shadow moved, We werent alone. Someone else is with us