Chapter 11 Lia
LIA
The metal beneath my hand hums. It’s not loud or sharp, and it doesn’t feel dangerous. It’s soft, warm—a vibration that doesn’t feel mechanical so much as… aware. I snatch my fingers back.
Rakkh notices instantly. Of course he does. He’s been watching me with the focus of a… well, a dragon. Which is what a Zmaj looks like—a dragon guarding something precious and breakable. That thought makes my stomach twist.
“It reacts to you,” he says quietly, stepping closer.
Too close. The faint blue glow fades from the seam I touched, like a heartbeat settling. The hum dies away.
“I don’t want it to,” I whisper.
Rakkh’s chest lifts—slow inhale, slow exhale—as his gaze drags over the walls, the floor, the soft pulsing veins of metal running like roots beneath the surface. His shoulders remain coiled with tension.
“You do not choose what old technology wants,” Travnyk murmurs from across the chamber. “It chooses.”
“Not helping,” Tomas mutters, hugging his knees near a rib-shaped support beam.
I wrap my arms around myself, wishing the cold knot in my gut would loosen. The buried ship feels wrong in a way the desert never does. Tajss is harsh. Tajss is dangerous. But this—this is alien, and it feels like memory, like I’m walking into someone else’s dream.
Rakkh brushes past me—just barely making contact—and even that accidental touch sends heat curling through my chest. I need space. I need to breathe. But the ship’s interior is small enough that every movement feels crowded. The walls curve inward, like the spine of something sleeping.
“We need light,” I say, forcing my voice steady.
“There is light,” Rakkh murmurs, eyes narrowing at the dim blue glow pulsing along the walls.
“No,” I say, swallowing. “Real light. Fire. Heat. Something… normal.”
Normal feels like a lie out here, but Rakkh nods once. Travnyk produces a striker and flint from his pouch. Tomas finds loose scraps of dried root in the seams of the wreckage—old, brittle, but usable. Together, they coax a flame to life in a shallow depression in the metal.
The fire’s glow warms the chamber and makes the alien metal feel less alive, less aware.
I sit beside the flame, rubbing the grit from my palms. Rakkh stays standing at first, watching the doorway like he expects the predator outside to crash through the metal at any moment.
Only when Travnyk switches to guard duty does Rakkh finally approach me and sit.
Not across from me—next to me. Close enough that the coolness of him competes with the fire.
“You are shaking,” he says.
“I’m fine,” I lie.
His head tilts slightly. He doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t call me out on it either.
“You led us to shelter,” he says instead. “Quickly. Wisely.”
I stare at the fire. “I just didn’t want anyone to die.”
He is quiet for a long moment. When he finally speaks again, his voice drops softer.
“You fear for others more than for yourself.”
I blink. Hard and fast. No one has ever said anything like that to me. I’ve never thought about it either. Living life—surviving on Tajss—there hasn’t been a lot of time to reflect.
“No,” I whisper. “I’m just… used to being the one at the back. The one no one notices.” I shrug, fingers twisting together. “It’s easier to worry about everyone else than it is to worry about yourself.”
His claws brush my knuckles. Barely a touch. More a question than contact—and it makes my breath catch.
“You are noticed,” Rakkh murmurs.
The words hit me, like heat stealing the air from my lungs.
“You think you’re unseen,” he continues, voice roughening. “But the land listens to you. The plants answer you. That metal—” He glances toward the glowing seam. “It knows your touch. Even the predators follow your steps.”
“That’s… not comforting,” I say weakly.
His lips curve—almost a smile—then his hand lifts. He brushes my cheekbone lightly, carefully, like he’s afraid his claws might cut me.
“You guide us,” he says softly. “You see what we cannot. Even I did not see the guardian’s weakness until you pointed it out.”
A flush crawls up my neck. I stare at the floor, but he leans in, forcing my eyes to meet his.
“You are not unnoticed, Lia,” he says, voice a low rumble. “Not by me.”
Everything in me goes molten.
The fire crackles beside us. Tomas mumbles something unintelligible in his sleep. Travnyk sits at the entryway of the corridor, watching the dunes beyond, but the world has narrowed.
To Rakkh’s breath brushing my skin. To the heat of his thigh, a whisper from mine. To the double-thrum of his hearts like drums against my ribs.
“Rakkh…” My voice cracks. “I don’t know what’s happening between us.”
His eyes soften—dark, molten, dangerous.
“I do,” he murmurs.
I swallow hard. “But we barely know each other.”
“That changes now.”
He moves an inch closer. Just one. Enough to spark heat everywhere our bodies almost touch. Enough that my whole chest tightens.
A metallic groan reverberates through the ship—low and vibrating—shifting the floor beneath us. Almost as if something, deep inside, knocked.
Rakkh instantly goes still, every muscle in his body tightening.
“We are not alone,” he says.
Not loud or panicked—only certain. I stiffen, heart racing.
“What does that mean?” I whisper.
He rises fluidly, placing himself between me and the corridor’s deeper shadows.
“It means,” he says, claws extending with a soft hiss, “this vessel is not as dead as it appears.”
And somewhere within the ship—deep, distant, echoing like memory—something knocks again. Soft. Hollow. Like something tapping on the other side of a wall, testing it.
The fire pops, causing me to jump. My only saving grace is that I manage not to yelp, choking down any sound before it passes my lips.
Tomas jerks awake with a strangled sound, scrambling closer to the center of the chamber.
Travnyk surges to his feet, blade raised, tusks catching the dim blue glow pulsing through the walls.
Rakkh doesn’t move from where he stands between me and the dark corridor ahead.
His wings shift downward, instinctively shielding me from the corridor. His tail lowers, curling slightly—aimed toward me, not away. The gesture is protective, primitive, and so startlingly intimate that my breath stutters.
“Rakkh,” I whisper. “What is it?”
“I do not think it is a creature,” he says, his voice low and rumbling like thunder. He tilts his head, listening. “It sounds like metal moving.”
“Somehow that sounds worse,” Tomas croaks.
“The structure shifts like bone under pressure. Perhaps it is settling,” Travnyk says, cautiously stepping forward.
Rakkh’s answer is immediate.
“No. I think this is deliberate.”
The ship groans again—longer this time. The sound vibrates up my legs through the floor, then hums under my skin. It feels… aware. Alive. My throat tightens.
“It’s not dead. Its systems are still functioning,” I say.
Rakkh glances back at me, pupils narrowing.
“Explain,” he says.
“I think…” I swallow. “I think the ship is reacting to stimuli. To us. The way the panel lit up when I touched it—it wasn’t random. It was a response.”
“Why your touch?” Travnyk asks softly.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “But I felt something. Like it recognizes—or remembers—me. Or someone like me. Humans.”
“It recognized you,” Rakkh says, stiffening—shoulders tight, jaw clenched.
Something fluttery and cold drops into my stomach.
“Yeah… that’s not good,” I say, voice thin.
Rakkh’s tail brushes my ankle lightly—so faint I’m not sure he meant to.
“It will not have you,” he says softly. “No matter what it remembers.”
Heat flares in my chest—unexpected, overwhelming—but the ship steals my breath before I can answer. A panel in the far wall shifts. Not sliding. Not opening. Unfurling.
Metal ripples outward, like petals of a flower blooming in reverse, revealing a narrow passage illuminated by faint violet veins running through the walls. The air that spills out is warm, carrying a scent I don’t recognize—ozone and something sweet, almost floral, definitely alien.
“Nope. No. No exploring the creepy corpse-ship hallway,” Tomas whimpers.
“It is not a corpse,” Travnyk murmurs. “It is living architecture.”
“Because that makes it oh so much better,” Tomas mutters.
The opening widens a fraction more—as if inviting. As if beckoning. Rakkh shifts closer to me. His voice is barely audible.
“It moves for you.”
“Or for anyone,” I whisper.
He shakes his head once.
“No. It responds when you touch it. When you breathe near it,” he says, jaw tightening. “When it hears your voice.”
“I didn’t give it my voice,” I say, a chill prickling along my spine.
“Yes,” he rumbles, stepping nearer so our shoulders almost brush. “You did.”
We stare at the corridor together.
“You do not go in alone,” he says quietly.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
He turns to fully face me. The firelight flickers across his scales. His eyes soften—not losing their danger, but reshaping it.
“You stay behind me. Always.” He pauses, then lower, softer, he adds, “Please.”
The breath leaves my body in a shaky exhale. Rakkh is not a creature who begs or asks. Yet here he is—asking me to let him protect me.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I stay behind you.”
The tension in his shoulders eases. Only slightly, but it’s enough that I feel it.
A new sound echoes—softer than the knocking. A hum. Musical. Melodic. Almost like a lullaby sung underwater. The metal veins along the walls pulse in rhythm.
“It sings,” Travnyk says, voice soft with hushed reverence.
“No,” Rakkh growls. “It warns.”
The humming grows louder—a resonance that vibrates inside my chest. The air warms. The passage brightens. And suddenly—I smell it.
Burnt ozone. Metal rot.
The same scent as the poisoned plants. The same scent as the creatures.
“Oh stars,” I breathe. “Rakkh—it’s connected. The creatures. The poison. The crash. It’s all connected.”
“Then we will see what it hides,” Rakkh says, flexing his claws.
Tomas makes a distressed sound.
“Or we don’t. Let’s consider not, for once—”
But Travnyk has already stepped to the threshold of the unfurled passage, eyes wide.
“It waits,” he murmurs.
Rakkh steps forward. But his hand—warm and steady—finds my waist first. Not gripping. Not dragging. Guiding. Protecting.
“I lead,” he says. “You follow.”
My pulse stutters. The ship hums again. The floor trembles. Something is coming. Something that woke with the ship. And in that moment—right before the next sound echoes from deeper inside the dark—a realization hits me with bone-deep certainty:
The ship didn’t just wake up because we touched it.
It woke up because I did.