Chapter 6 Kara
KARA
Iwake to a sound I don’t recognize.
Not the snapping pop of dying embers, not the shuffle of boots or wings. It’s softer, stranger—like sand being sifted through cloth. A whisper over the canyon walls. For a moment, I think I’m dreaming, but when I open my eyes, the sky is wrong.
Tajss doesn’t have skies like this. Not in my memory.
The twin red suns usually blaze against endless red and gold, heat beating down, hardly broken by the hint of a cloud.
Even at dawn, the light is sharp and clear.
Now, though, the suns are muted. Veiled behind a layer of shifting gray.
Clouds. Heavy ones. The sky wears them like armor.
My stomach drops. I’ve seen clouds before.
Simulated in the open parks of the generation ship and on old Earth vids.
Where weather changed with the turning of a season.
When Earth still had oceans and rain. But here?
On Tajss? The air has always been hot and bare, burning away anything soft enough to fall.
Clouds are an anomaly. They don’t belong here.
I sit up slowly, letting the blanket slide from my shoulders.
Sand clings to the sweat on my skin, gritty and cold in the morning chill.
My arm throbs where the venom splattered.
The bandage is darkened and stiff, but that ache is almost background noise compared to the unease crawling over my nerves.
Around me, the others are stirring. Joran mutters first, his voice hoarse.
“Tell me I’m not the only one seeing that,” he says, jerking his chin at the sky, eyes wide and bloodshot.
Harlan spits into the dust, though his mouth must be as dry as mine.
“Storms don’t come here. Not like this. It’s a curse, that’s what it is.”
“Everything’s a curse to you,” Joran snaps back, but the words are thin, without fire. He’s afraid too.
The younger Zmaj is on his feet, wings twitching hard enough to rattle the air. His gaze rakes the sky as I do, unsettled, searching for something neither of us can name.
“The desert doesn’t like this,” he mutters, half to himself. “It hides the suns. Nothing good comes when the suns hide.”
His words scrape at the raw edge of my nerves.
I hug my arms around myself, staring at the horizon.
The light is different—flat, colorless. Shadows fall where they shouldn’t, stretching too long, twisting against the canyon walls.
Even the air tastes wrong, carrying a faint tang of dust, metallic and dry.
And then I notice the scarred warrior.
He stands apart from the rest of us, nothing unusual in that.
But he’s not stirring or muttering. Just…
watching. His lochaber strapped across his back, his body still as stone, his gaze fixed far down the canyon.
The scars ridging his hide catch the strange gray light, pale against dark crimson, as if the sky itself wants to etch him sharper.
He doesn’t look back, doesn’t need to. His silence pulls more weight than their bickering ever could. When Joran curses, when Harlan mutters prayers, even when the younger Zmaj’s wings flare, they all glance his way in the end. Waiting. As though the answer lies in whether or not he moves.
I can’t look away. The trap of it gnaws at me—that I’ve spent so much time resenting the others, feeling pressed in by their needs, their complaints, the way they made me small.
I never asked their names until yesterday.
I never cared. They were just obstacles to push against. Shadows on the edges of my anger.
But him? He doesn’t blur. Hasn’t once. He fills the space around him without a word, makes every choice feel sharper just by existing. Yet I don’t know his name either.
My belly growls, loud enough to sting my pride.
Hunger burns through me like acid, twisting deep.
It would be easy to fall back into self-absorption, to fixate only on my own hollow ache, not just in my belly but in my soul.
His steadiness pulls me out of that. It’s not comfort, not exactly.
More like a rope tied to something beneath my ribs, yanking me forward whether I want it or not.
The wind picks up, carrying grit into my hair, across my face. I taste it on my tongue—bitter and dry. Dark clouds are rolling across the sky, thickening until the suns are faint blurs. Harlan crosses himself, muttering louder.
“It’s bad luck. Worse than bad luck. Should’ve stayed in the tunnels.”
“You’d rather burn or rot underground than choke here?” Joran swears at him, words breaking into a cough. “You’d have been buried by the quakes.”
The younger Zmaj whips his wings wide, the motion sharp, impatient.
“Enough,” he snaps, his voice rough with exhaustion. “Storm or no, we walk.”
I glance once more at the scarred warrior. He hasn’t moved, but the moment his gaze flicks toward the canyon’s mouth, I know—storm or not, he’s going forward. And where he goes, I will follow.
We break camp in silence. No one bothers arguing. There’s not much to gather—fraying blankets and waterskins that are light in our hands. Even the fire refused to last through the night, the embers cold and useless.
The overcast sky presses low, flattening the world into dull gray.
It’s weird and kind of freaking me out. Tajss doesn’t wear colors like this.
I keep glancing up, half-expecting the clouds to tear and vanish, for the twin suns to blaze again.
They don’t. The gray holds, heavy and unnatural, dimming the canyon into a shadow of itself.
Harlan hunches his shoulders as we walk, lips moving in a constant mutter.
His words are too soft to catch, but the cadence is steady, like a chant to ward off evil.
Joran lags at first, then stumbles forward in uneven bursts, his curses spilling louder with every step.
Hunger has made him meaner, his eyes darting at the scarred warrior’s back as though almost daring to lay blame where he knows it can’t stick.
The younger Zmaj walks with restless tension, wings twitching like he wants to launch himself above the canyon and escape the weight of the sky. Every scrape of grit underfoot makes his head snap toward it, eyes narrowing. He’s on edge, and it’s crawling into my own skin.
I stay close to the scarred warrior.
He doesn’t set a fast pace, but it’s relentless—no pause, no slack, no stumble. His stride eats the canyon floor, his broad shoulders never bowing. The lochaber rides loose across his back as if he expects to need it at any moment.
The others may curse or mutter, but they follow all the same. Even when their eyes flick to me, sharp with doubt, their feet fall into his rhythm. It’s unconscious, automatic. He doesn’t command with words. He doesn’t need to.
Dust lifts in faint curls with every step, carried by a wind that whistles thin through the canyon walls. Grit stings my cheeks, catches in my teeth. I spit it out, but it’s no use. The taste of the storm is heavy in the air.
My arm throbs beneath the bandage, every pulse sending a sting up to my shoulder.
I press a hand against it when the ache flares too hard, hiding the motion from the others.
They’d call it weakness. He notices, though—I feel his glance slide toward me for the briefest heartbeat before he turns forward again.
Somehow, that’s enough to steady me.
The canyon stretches on, endless walls of red stone darkened by the sky.
Strange plants cling to the cracks, spindly stalks tipped with faintly glowing flowers that flicker in the gloom.
Joran spits at one, snarling something about “witch plants.” The glow fades where his spit lands, the stalk curling in on itself like it heard him.
A shiver runs down my spine. Tajss feels more alive in ways it hasn’t before.
“Storm’s coming,” the younger Zmaj mutters, wings snapping wide before folding again. “The desert’s warning us.”
Harlan’s mutters grow louder, desperate. Joran tells him to shut it, but his voice shakes.
I look up once more. The twin suns are ghosts behind the gray, faint and blurred, their light smothered until they’re nothing but pale disks.
The scarred warrior never looks back, never breaks stride. I keep my eyes fixed on his back. My belly aches, my throat tastes of grit, but as long as he keeps walking, I will too.
By the time the suns sink, we’re staggering. Even Joran has stopped cursing, his voice rasped into silence. Harlan mutters prayers under his breath until his words slur into nothing. The younger Zmaj paces at the edges, restless wings twitching but too drained to lift.
The scarred warrior chooses the place to stop. He doesn’t say it—he never does—but he slows, then silently drops his pack and plants the lochaber upright in the sand. The rest of us follow suit.
We settle among jagged outcrops of stone that lean together like broken teeth. They block some of the wind, but not enough. Grit slithers through every crack, scouring skin, whispering across the blankets we’re using as a thin shield. My teeth crunch with sand when I swallow.
We build no fire. There’s nothing to burn, and the light would only blind us in this strange half-dark.
The sky hangs low and heavy, smothering the stars.
I can barely make out the pale blur of the twin suns before they vanish entirely.
Tajss has never looked like this, and the wrongness presses until I can hardly breathe.
Harlan drops to the ground, head in his hands. Joran stretches out on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes as though shutting it all out might change it. Neither says much. Hunger has stolen their words.
The younger Zmaj crouches near the rocks, wings hunched close. His tail lashes sand in sharp bursts, his gaze flicking constantly toward the canyon’s mouth. He’s young, yes, but it’s clear he feels it too.
I sit with my back to the stone, knees pulled to my chest, blanket tight around my shoulders. My stomach cramps, sharp and hollow. Every inhale tastes of dust.
And still, my gaze goes to him.
The scarred warrior sits opposite me, the lochaber resting across his knees. His head is tilted slightly, eyes narrowed, watching the horizon the way a predator does—unblinking, patient. He looks carved for this world, as if storms and hunger and endless stone were the forge that made him.
My chest tightens. I should look away, should close my eyes and pretend to sleep like the others. But I can’t. His silence pulls at me, steadier than any prayer, sharper than any threat.
The wind hisses louder through the canyon teeth, rattling the stone at our backs. Sand stings my cheek where it finds a gap in the blanket. I pull it tighter, but the sound doesn’t stop—the whisper of something building, stronger with every breath.
The younger Zmaj mutters low, his wings snapping open once before folding again.
“It’s coming.”
None of the humans answer. Even Joran, quick with his curses, keeps his face buried under his arm.
The scarred warrior lifts his gaze to the sky, and for the first time, I see something flicker in his eyes. Not fear. Anticipation.
The storm isn’t here yet, but it’s coming closer.
And when it comes, he’ll be ready. And, somehow, I’ll be ready too.