Chapter 10
TEN
CYAN
Back in the holdover that night, Cyan placed the sword onto the sill. Earendel’s nighttime nebula cast a silver pool along the blade’s edge. The golden vein pulsed with the remnants of a faint crimson glow that faded but never quite disappeared since the first night he arrived on the planet.
He turned to the desk and pulled out the old Gaian tome he’d brought as a keepsake. The weathered cover showed a boy with a sword, sitting on a majestic white steed—a glimpse of an age long past. He brushed fingers along the ridges of the illustration before flipping the book open.
Battles and quests filled the brittle pages—knights on horseback, mythical creatures, ancient kings. Cyan flipped through the book, each illustration a reminder of stories he had grown up hearing by childhood fires.
He paused on a chapter depicting a Gaian fortune teller—an old woman with deep-set eyes and a knowing smile, surrounded by faded runes. Elaina had asked him about palm reading before… He wondered if Earendel had its own stories, its own truths hidden in its legends. Perhaps there were clues there, waiting for him to discover. Chevron was a mo dern city, flooded with scrappy tech and buzzing neon. But the tribal lands would be a different story.
As Cyan reached for his dataslate, his promise to Elaina, delivered before they parted, came to mind. He said he’d chime her about meeting again. At the time he’d meant it. But now, there was a discomfort to the expectation. And he needed to work. He would chime her. Just later.
Instead, he activated the slate and pulled up a map of Earendel’s outskirts. The tribal lands spread beyond the city’s boundary, reaching past the dunes into the untamed wilds.
He traced potential routes with his finger. Those lands called to him, something about them feeling right—a place untouched by the technological grip that now failed the rest of the planet. He had thought the disturbances on Earendel—the malfunctions—were part of why he was here, but what if the true source of corruption was out there, in the plains? He needed a bigger picture.
The walk with Elaina had felt too easy, like slipping into a rhythm that wasn’t his own. He couldn’t afford to let it distract him from what needed to be done. The connection between them had gone beyond simple attraction. There was something more there—and it could easily pull him off course.
Cyan leaned back in his chair, eyes falling back to the blade. He stood and crossed to the window, staring out at the quiet streets below. The flickering lamps along the roads brought back memories of the fire he and Elaina had shared—the warmth of it, the dry air, the way she had handed him sandseeds with that tentative compassion and fed him snake meat with nervous, gentle fingers. Cyan shook his head, pulling himself back to the present.
He grabbed his pack from the corner, tossing in a few essentials. Tomorrow, he’d leave for the tribal lands and find whatever waited for him there. The sword had drawn him here for a reason—something beyond the bond forming with Elaina.
But what if she were part of the reason too? She’d noticed the technical anomalies before anyone else, and had been working on putting things back together. She was restoring the order of things too, in her own way. Like him.
He silenced the thought, sliding the sword into its sheath. There would be time for that later.
Maybe.