Chapter 10 Rakkh
RAKKH
The dune should not be moving like this.
Sand flows. It slides, shifts, and changes with the wind, but it does not move in rhythm. It does not pulse. It does not breathe like the chest of a sleeping beast does. But beneath my feet—beneath hers—the desert heaves.
“Back!” I bark, instinct overriding thought itself.
My arm closes around Lia’s waist, lifting her clear of the collapsing slope. She gasps, arms flying around my shoulders as the dune dips another impossible inch. Travnyk leaps to higher ground. Tomas drops onto all fours and scrambles like a panicked child—but he lives.
Lia is warm in my arms. Her heart beats against my chest like a trapped bird. I set her down only when I find ground that holds weight. She steadies herself, but her fingers linger on my forearm—tight, desperate, trusting. It almost undoes me entirely.
A deep rumble rolls beneath us. Not the roar of a guardian or the sound of a burrower tunneling. This is metal. Old metal. Shifting. The dune bulges as if exhaling dust, then sinks hard.
“What is happening?” Tomas squeaks, voice cracking.
“The structure moves,” Travnyk says, tusks angled in warning. “It wakes.”
I do not like this—not the scent of the place, or the way the sand trembles beneath Lia’s feet as though reaching for her. The dune shudders one more time, and part of it collapses.
Sand pours downward like water disappearing through a broken drain, revealing a curve of dark metal thirty times larger than the piece she’d touched earlier. An entire wall of it.
Lia steps forward, breath catching. Her hair blows across her face in a gust of hot wind, and her eyes—stars save me—glow with something between fear and awe.
“It’s a ship,” she whispers. “Or… some kind of vessel.”
“Yes.” Travnyk kneels, brushing sand from the exposed surface. “This structure, it looks… grown, not forged.”
My stomach tightens. “Grown?”
“Organic metal,” he murmurs softly.
Lia crouches beside him, too close to the opening. Too close to the unknown. I move behind her on instinct alone, my body casting a protective shadow over her.
“Rakkh,” she says softly, without looking back. “It’s the same alloy.”
“Then step away.” My voice comes out harsher than I intend. I force it lower. “Please.”
Her breath stutters, but she doesn’t move.
“There’s something beneath it,” she whispers. “Look—the sand is sliding into that opening.”
She reaches toward the newly revealed seam. I seize her wrist. Her breath catches. The air thickens between us.
“Do not touch what we do not understand,” I say, softer now. “The last time, it marked you.”
It marked her. Reacted to her. Recognized her. I do not like that thought. Not at all. She swallows, gaze locking on mine.
“But we need to see what’s down there.”
“I need you alive more.”
Her lips part, but no argument comes out.
The dune has no patience for our hesitation. A sudden, deep thoom echoes from within the metal beneath us.
The ground tilts.
Tomas yelps.
Travnyk shouts a warning.
Sand collapses inward, and Lia slips.
She gasps as her feet slide out. She doesn’t fall far—but she falls toward the widening seam anyway. Without thought or hesitation, I lunge.
My claws close around her arm as her boots skid toward the open gap. A flash of violet glimmers beneath the sand—a light from within the structure—faint but unmistakable.
She freezes. It does not look like fear. Her eyes widen, pupils dilating as though something unseen is pulling at her. It is connecting to her.
“Lia!” I roar.
She jerks back to herself. I haul her up, lifting her off the shifting ground until her feet find stability. She clings to me—arms around my shoulders, trembling, breath hot against my throat.
“Did it call to you?” I rasp, the words thick, dangerous.
She swallows once. Twice.
“I… I don’t know,” she whispers. “Maybe.”
Rage—sharp and bewildering—flares through me without warning. Rage at the metal. At the crash. At anything that dares reach for her.
“It does not touch you,” I snarl. “Not while I breathe.”
Her fingers curl into my scales. Her voice cracks.
“Rakkh… look.”
I turn.
The seam has widened. The sand has sunk a hand’s width, and a hollow—deep and dark—opens beneath the surface. A passage. A tunnel. A mouth. This structure wants to be found.
Or it wants us to enter.
Travnyk steps beside us, voice grim.
“We have uncovered enough for now. The sun drops. Night hunters move soon.”
Tomas swallows painfully. “So we—uh—we leave? Please?”
“No,” Lia says, steadier. More herself. She steps from my arms, though not far. “We document everything first.”
I almost refuse. Almost. But I cannot deny the brilliance in her eyes—the fierce, fearless spark that has led us through every danger we’ve encountered so far.
“We proceed. With caution,” I exhale slowly.
Her smile—small, weary, proud—nearly undoes me again.
As she kneels beside the widening seam, sketching the metal curvature in the sand, the violet pulse flickers once more from deep within the structure. Calling. Searching. Recognizing. And I realize, with cold certainty, that this buried thing does not want Travnyk. Or Tomas. Or me.
It wants her.
And over my dead body will it have her.
The dune settles, but the echoes crawl through my bones.
Lia’s scent—fear, determination, the sharp edge of adrenaline—clings to my tongue.
Her warmth lingers against my chest where I hold her.
I should step away. Put distance between us.
But I hold her longer. Unable—no, unwilling—to let go.
I hold her too long. She trembles once, barely perceptible, but I feel it.
Then there is another rumble beneath the sand. Deeper and wider. Travnyk steps closer, eyes wide in alarm.
“That was not the machine,” he says softly. “That was some kind of burrower.”
Lia’s gaze snaps to the dune. She hears it too. Feels it. Her fear isn’t sharp; it is a cold, heavy, thinking fear.
“We need shelter,” she says. “Something is moving out there.”
I nod once. “We withdraw. Slowly.”
Tomas doesn’t wait—he stumbles backward, breath shallow, eyes wide.
“I don’t—I can’t—another monster—”
“Quiet,” I snap. “Noise draws predators.”
He swallows his panic, but only barely. His hands shake so hard the small knife he carries clatters against his thigh.
Lia steps forward before I can stop her, placing a steadying hand on his arm. Her touch anchors him. Her voice steadies him. She does it without thinking, without hesitation, and I feel something hot twist low in my chest at the sight. She has courage enough for all of us.
Travnyk lifts his head, scenting the wind. He growls, a low rumbling sound.
“A predator draws closer,” he murmurs. “Fast.”
“The dune just—just moved! Something huge is coming—” Tomas chokes on a panicked breath.
“Silence,” I snarl, low and sharp. “Noise will bring it faster.”
Lia turns to the widening seam of metal and sand, eyes bright with fear, but also something calmer beneath it. She’s calculating escape routes, safe zones, airflow, structural stability. She is unlike any human I’ve known.
Her hand slides along the ship’s exposed hull. The grooves beneath her fingertips pulse faintly—blue, soft, breathing with her touch, like the ship knows her—and I hate that. I hate the way it responds to her. I hate that anything other than me pays that kind of attention to her body.
The dune behind us convulses—sand shooting upward in a spray.
A tremor hits the earth hard enough that Lia stumbles.
I catch her waist because I cannot allow her to fall.
Not here, with danger rising around us like jaws.
Her fingers tighten on my arm. For a moment, I forget the entire desert exists. Then the dune heaves a second time.
“Inside,” I say.
Travnyk frowns. “Inside the metal? We do not know what sleeps there.”
“No, but we do know that something hunts out here,” I growl. “Choose.”
Tomas chooses for all of us—bolting toward the open seam in the ship’s hull before he can lose his nerve.
Travnyk follows, sliding down the angled slab of metal with practiced control.
Lia stands frozen—half from fear, half from awe.
The ship hums beneath her hand, light blooming under her palm like a pulse answering her heartbeat.
“Lia,” I say.
She looks at me—her eyes wide, moonlit, too soft for a place as cruel as this.
“It’s calling to me,” she whispers.
My throat tightens. “Then we move before it calls death as well.”
I yank her back from the collapsing sand and guide her toward the opening. She follows, but each step nearer to the vessel drags at her like a tide pulling her inward. The ship wants her, but over my corpse will it have her.
The entrance is narrow, jagged from whatever impact buried it centuries ago.
I slide in—claws braced, wings tight, senses open.
The interior is a hollowed corridor, curved like the inside of a ribcage.
Dust and sand coat the floor. Strange lights pulse weakly in the walls, like dying embers remembering how to glow.
“Clear,” I say.
Lia slips in behind me, body brushing my side, the slightest heat of her thigh grazing my scales. Her breath hitches at the sight of the interior.
“It’s… beautiful,” she whispers.
I do not call it beautiful. I call it dangerous. Unknown. Hungry. But she sees the world differently, even when it’s trying to swallow her whole.
Travnyk tests the wall with his blade. It hums softly—not metallic as Zmaj steel should sound. Something in between metal and living flesh.
“Organic alloy,” he mutters. “It flexes.”
Tomas stands in the center of the corridor, clutching his knife with shaking hands.
“Just… just tell me it’s stable. That we’re not going to get crushed if this thing rolls over.”
“It will not roll,” I say. “Not while I am here.”
But the ship does shift—just slightly. A long vibration moves through the structure, up my legs and spine. The hum thickens, pulses stronger, responds to Lia. Of course it responds to her.
She reaches out, brushing a faintly glowing groove with her fingertips. The groove lights beneath her touch—blue, sharp, bright. The ship is awake now. Travnyk stiffens.
“Rakkh… I feel no predator. It stopped moving.”
Tomas almost sobs with relief. “So… it left?”
“No,” Lia murmurs, turning toward the corridor entrance.
Her voice is quiet. Steady.
“It’s out there. Watching. Waiting for us to leave.”
A cold knot twists in my gut because I’m certain she is right.
Looking outside, I see the dune rippling, smooth and controlled, as if something massive circles the vessel, testing the edges. The beast from before was corrupted by this place, but this one… this one is smarter.
It will not attack the ship. It is waiting to attack us when we step outside. Lia trembles—not in fear, but realization.
“We can’t go back out,” she whispers. “Not yet.”
“No,” I agree. “We shelter here until the danger passes.”
“But the ship—” she protests. “There could be more dangers… inside.”
My voice drops low, fierce, certain.
“Then I kill whatever threatens you.”
She looks at me with a softness that nearly destroys my composure. Not admiration. Not gratitude. Trust. Pure. Unfiltered. And the most dangerous thing she could do to me. I step closer—too close—until the heat of her body brushes my chest again.
“You will stay behind me,” I murmur. “You will not touch anything that reacts to you. You will breathe when I tell you to breathe.”
Her breath catches. “Why?”
Because I cannot lose her. But I cannot say that.
Instead, I say only—
“Because this place wants you.”
Her lips part. Her eyes widen. A shiver rolls through her.
“And,” I add quietly, “because you are mine to guard.”
She exhales—slow, trembling, surrendering in the smallest way.
“…Okay.”
Behind us, Tomas clears his throat and mutters, “I’m gonna… sit. Somewhere. Over there.”
Travnyk shakes his head, tusks catching the dim blue glow.
“Humans,” he grumbles.
But Lia still looks at me. And I look at her, and for one breath—one heartbeat—we are alone in a waking ghost. Outside, the predator circles.
Inside, the ship answers her touch. I know, with absolute certainty, we are trapped between two hungers.
And one of them wants her far more than it wants blood.