Chapter 5 Kara
KARA
Now that the danger is over, the others come closer.
The predator’s body lies stretched across the stone, its bronze plates dulling as time passes.
Venom is still dripping from its jaws, sizzling where it pools, with smoke curling up in bitter wisps.
The stench is thick and acrid, clinging to the back of my throat until I want to gag.
One of the men does gag, bending double and retching.
“Gods, it reeks. And this is what’s out here? How are we supposed to survive with that hunting us?” the other one exclaims, one hand over his mouth and nose.
He kicks the corpse. My stomach growls hard enough to twist me in half, but at the same time, the thought of food makes bile rise.
I fought the thing, felt its blood spatter my skin, watched venom eat through fabric and stone.
The idea of putting its flesh in my mouth—no.
My gut rebels, and I have to swallow hard to keep from losing it, too.
“What if this is all there is? We can’t go another day without eating,” the gagging human says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, shaking his head. He looks at the corpse longingly. “You think we could eat it?”
His companion gestures at the blackened rock where the venom is hissing.
“What? You’d choke it down? Meat that melts stone will melt us too,” the other male says.
The younger Zmaj circles the carcass in slow, prowling steps. His wings twitch restlessly, half-spread as though he expects the beast to rise again. His nostrils flare, catching the reek. Unease flickers across his face, quickly smoothed into bravado.
“It was strong,” he says at last, his voice low. “Not easy prey.” His eyes cut to me, sharp and searching. “But she stood. She fought.”
Heat rushes to my face, hotter than the venom burn beneath the fresh bandage. My arm throbs, but the words strike deeper. He saw. They all saw. The snarky human barks out a laugh, high and bitter.
“Fought? You mean flailed until he—” he jerks his chin at the scarred Zmaj, “—sliced it in two. She’d be nothing but bones if not for him.”
My pride stings sharper than the burn on my arm. A retort catches in my throat, useless and raw. The younger Zmaj’s head snaps toward the man, wings flaring wide in sudden fury.
“She struck it first,” he growls, voice vibrating with restrained violence. “She cut it before any of us moved. Drew blood. You cowered. She didn’t.”
The man flinches, taking a step back, muttering something too low to catch. He stares at the ground and doesn’t press the point.
My throat tightens. I grip the hilt of my knife until my knuckles ache. Pain radiates from my arm, but pride swells in my chest. Under it all, something steadier pulses. I hadn’t folded. They saw it. Even if my strike wasn’t the killing blow, the first blow was mine.
The scarred warrior looms over the carcass, lochaber in hand.
He doesn’t acknowledge their words or mine.
His silence is heavier than the humans’ fear, heavier than the younger Zmaj’s defense.
He simply stands, black eyes fixed on the husk of the beast, then looks around as if already weighing the next danger in the shadows.
And though he says nothing, I still feel it—that thrumming awareness between us, alive and undeniable.
The stink of the beast clings to everything, sharp and sour, but worse is the hollow gnawing in my belly. One of the men wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, still pale from retching.
“Harlan,” he croaks, voice rough, “we can’t just leave it. Meat’s meat. Cut deep enough, maybe the flesh inside’s good.”
The other—Harlan—rounds on him with a scowl.
“You’re mad, Joran. Did you see what came out of its mouth? You’d put that in your gut?”
“Better that than nothing. You think our bones won’t show by tomorrow?” Joran asks, straightening, jaw clenched.
Their words grate against each other, louder, sharper. Hunger speaks through both of them, but fear digs its claws in, too.
The younger Zmaj circles the carcass in measured steps, wings twitching. His lip curls as he squats low, claws scraping lightly against one of the beast’s plates. He lifts them, stained dark, then flicks the residue aside.
“Poison rides its blood. Even carrion beasts wouldn’t touch it,” he says.
“Easy for you to say,” Joran snaps, teeth bared in something too desperate to be real anger. “Your kind eats less than we do.”
Before the younger Zmaj can flare back, the scarred warrior moves. He steps forward without hurry, lowering to one knee. The lochaber slides into the carcass with a clean, practiced push. He pries a strip of meat free with the blade and tosses it onto the bare ground.
We watch in silence as the chunk sits there, heavy and raw. For a breath, I think maybe Joran’s right—maybe it will stay solid, maybe there’s a chance—
The strip smolders, flesh breaking down into a blackened smear.
Every voice dies.
The silence is broken by Harlan swearing under his breath as he takes a stumbling step back. Joran curses, too, this time without conviction. Their argument is gone, hollowed out in an instant.
The scarred warrior wipes his blade on the dirt and rises. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. The younger Zmaj inclines his head, voice rough.
“Dead thing’s no food. We leave it.”
I exhale slowly, tension bleeding out of my shoulders. Relief and despair tangle in my chest until I can’t tell them apart. My belly feels like a pit, raw and empty, but at least we know. Starvation is slower, but it doesn’t rot you from the inside out.
The argument dies with the smoldering flesh, and in the silence that follows, I hear their names echo in my head.
Harlan. Joran.
I hadn’t known them before now. I’ve walked beside them for a day, shared water and fires, yet they were just “the humans” to me.
Faces blurred together by exhaustion, voices I only half-heard when they complained.
It startles me to realize that I hadn’t cared enough to listen until they shouted their names at each other.
And the younger Zmaj… I still don’t know his name. He’s been restless, pacing, snapping when hungry. A weight I resented. But now I can’t unhear the way he defended me, the heat in his voice when he told Joran I’d struck first.
Names matter. They anchor people in the world.
Without names, they’re shadows, easy to ignore and easy to step around.
That’s what I’ve done—walked among shadows, all of them blurred shapes at the edge of my struggle.
Maybe it was easier that way. Easier to stay inside my own skin, my own hunger and hurt.
Easier to think I was alone, but I’m not.
My gaze drifts to the scarred warrior, rising to his full height, lochaber balanced across his back. He didn’t need to say a word to end the argument. Didn’t need to defend me like the younger Zmaj did. His certainty fills the air all on its own, a silent command that bends the world around it.
He isn’t a blur. He never has been.
Every other face fades into the press of the crowd or the weight of survival.
His doesn’t. I don’t know his name, but I know him in a way that sinks deeper than sound.
He’s the only one who makes me feel like the trap of being unseen, unheard, unwanted isn’t permanent.
The only one who’s pulled me into focus, without trying, without asking.
A flush creeps up my neck, shame and something hotter tangled together.
I’ve been so busy carrying my anger—at Amara, at Rosalind, at the camp, at the way everyone looks through me—that I didn’t notice the people beside me were carrying things, too.
Hunger. Fear. Desperation. And still, he held the watch all night.
He cut down the beast that would have ended me. He bound my arm with careful hands.
Confidence rolls off him—not arrogance, not noise, just… certainty. The kind that steadies instead of smothers. I want to stand taller because of it, not shrink away.
I flex my fingers, testing the bandage, the ache throbbing steadily beneath. My pride still burns hotter than the wound, but one thought nags at me. Maybe it’s time to see more than just my own reflection in everyone else’s eyes.
We leave the carcass behind. No one says it aloud, but every step away feels like abandoning a chance we can’t afford to waste. Even poisoned, even deadly, it was meat, and the ache in my belly gnaws sharper with every stride.
The canyon narrows as we press forward. The walls close in, high and jagged. Shadows pool where the suns don’t reach. My boots scrape thin lines across the sand and dirt, too loud in the stillness.
Harlan mutters curses under his breath, low and steady, like each one keeps his legs moving. Joran doesn’t bother to hide his misery. He stumbles often, cursing louder, throwing sharp looks at the scarred warrior’s back as though blaming him for every empty breath.
The younger Zmaj keeps pace near the rear, wings half-furled, eyes flicking to every crevice and ridge. He’s restless but alert, and for once I’m grateful for it.
I stay near the scarred warrior. His stride is long, unbroken, never faltering.
He doesn’t look back, doesn’t waste words, but his silence is a kind of shield I can walk inside of.
The memory of his nod this morning, the way his hand steadied mine when he bound my wound, lingers stronger than hunger.
The land itself feels sharper. Plants I don’t recognize jut from cracks—thin stalks tipped with faintly glowing flowers, their petals pulsing like they breathe. A low vine threads along the stone wall, its thorns glinting silver. I give it a wide berth; beauty doesn’t mean safety on Tajss.
The air grows heavy as the suns climb higher.
Heat beats down in waves, driving sweat across my back, but still a chill hangs in the narrow pass.
It seeps from the stone, curling around my ankles, reminding me too much of the tunnels we escaped.
Harlan stumbles again, catching himself with a ragged curse.
“We’ll starve out here,” he grinds out, glaring at the scarred warrior. “Better to risk poison than—”
“Better to keep walking,” the younger Zmaj snaps, his voice sharp enough to cut. “You’ll find nothing by sitting still.”
Their words scrape, but I keep my eyes forward. The canyon seems endless, every bend revealing another stretch of stone and shadow. My arm throbs beneath the bandage, and hunger claws deeper, but step by step, I move.
The scarred warrior never slows.
The canyon winds on, jagged and endless. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, every swallow scraping raw. The bandage on my arm has soaked through, with the venom burn pulsing hot and angry beneath. Each heartbeat feels like it carries the ache deeper, winding it through my veins.
Harlan and Joran bicker in ragged bursts, their voices too thin to carry a real fight. Joran’s curses slur now, his steps dragging more each time. Harlan mutters prayers between clenched teeth. The younger Zmaj snaps at them once or twice, but even his wings droop, twitching less with each mile.
I keep my eyes on him.
The scarred warrior’s stride cuts through the canyon with the same certainty he carried into the fight. His back is straight, his shoulders steady, every movement deliberate. Not arrogant—just unshakable, like he belongs to this land in a way the rest of us never will.
My chest aches, not just from the wound or the hunger, but from the way he fills the silence without a word. It should frighten me, the stillness of him, the certainty. Instead, it steadies me. Every step feels possible if I match it to his.
My vision blurs once, then sharpens again when I blink.
The ground wavers, shimmering at the edge of sight.
I stumble, catching myself with a hiss of pain.
His head turns. Just a fraction, one dark eye cutting back to me.
The look holds long enough that my breath snags.
He doesn’t stop, doesn’t ask, just waits that heartbeat to see if I’ll rise again.
I do.
He turns forward once more, and I press harder into the burn of my arm, the bite of hunger, the rasp of my breath. I won’t let him see me falter again.
The canyon stretches on. Shadows deepen, walls closing tighter, but my gaze never leaves the broad line of his back.
Not the hunger. Not the ache. Only him.