Chapter 13 Kara
KARA
The first rib rises higher than a watchtower, curving overhead in a pale arch.
The next thrusts out of the sand at a jagged angle, fractured near the tip, big enough for ten men to walk side by side beneath it.
They don’t stand alone—more bones jut out all around us, half-buried, stretching into the storm like the remains of a thousand monsters.
Joran stumbles against me, swearing under his breath.
“What in all the cursed hells—” he says, trailing off as he looks around, eyes wide with fear.
Harlan yanks free from my grip, crossing himself with shaking hands. His lips move fast, words tumbling too low to catch. Prayers, or maybe bargains.
The younger Zmaj stops in his tracks, wings tucking close to his body. His throat bobs, and for the first time, he looks less like a restless warrior and more like a hatchling staring at a shadow.
“This is wrong,” he says, voice tight. “This place… it is for the dead. We should not be here.”
I hug my arms tight against the wind, staring up at a rib as thick as a tree trunk.
The sheer size of it makes my stomach twist. I’d thought the lizard-creature terrifying, but this—whatever these bones belonged to—must have been bigger than anything I can imagine.
Not a predator of men, but a predator of worlds.
A low whistle escapes me before I can stop it.
“What could’ve killed something this big?”
No one answers.
The scarred warrior strides ahead without pause, lochaber strapped across his back, the storm tugging at his braid and the edges of his scars. His black eyes flick once over the field, sharp, searching. The barest tightening of his jaw is the only sign that he knows this place.
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to. The set of his shoulders tells me enough—he’s seen something like this before. If not in person, then in stories, or maybe in whispers, but no matter what, he doesn’t like it.
My pulse quickens. I should be afraid. Everyone else is. But the longer I stare at the looming ribs, the more I feel something else—small, yes, but also… alive. Like the desert itself is bigger than anything I’d dared believe, and somehow, I’ve been allowed to walk inside its oldest secret.
The storm moans through the hollows of the bones, a sound like a dying creature’s last breath. Joran curses louder. Harlan prays faster. The younger Zmaj mutters again that we shouldn’t stay.
But the scarred warrior presses on, and my feet follow before I think better of it.
Wherever he leads, I will go.
Wind screams through the ribs like a thousand hollow flutes, a chorus of the dead.
Grit bites into my cheeks, fills the cracks in my lips.
My eyes burn, watering, but the scarred warrior never slows.
He moves with the inevitability of stone, stride sure, head high, as if even the storm bends around him.
Behind me, Joran stumbles again.
“This is madness,” he rasps, spitting grit. “Shelter in a graveyard? We’ll be buried with them before the suns rise.”
Harlan doesn’t answer. His voice is a constant drone, words too fast and too soft to understand, prayers tripping over themselves until they sound like begging. His fingers worry the beads strung around his wrist, snapping them against his palm hard enough to leave bruises.
The younger Zmaj mutters sharp syllables under his breath. Not prayers, but close enough. His eyes dart from shadow to shadow, wings folding tight to his back, restless but wary.
The storm howls louder, filling every hollow of the bones until I can’t tell if the sound comes from the wind or from something inside them.
Then I see it.
At first, I think it’s a cliff face, smooth and curved, pale against the storm.
But as we stumble closer, the shape sharpens into detail.
Cracks mar the surface like old scars. The curve dips into sockets black as night.
And below, the jaw yawns wide—teeth jutting like spears, long enough to skewer a horse, half-buried in drifting sand.
A skull.
Massive. Ancient. Big enough that its gaping mouth would swallow us whole. Joran stops dead, throwing an arm out as if that could block the storm that buffets him from side to side.
“No. I won’t step in there. You hear me? That’s not shelter, that’s a tomb.”
Harlan’s prayers break into whimpers. He presses his forehead to his hands, shaking so hard his teeth chatter. The younger Zmaj hisses a word in his own language that I don’t know, his voice low and fierce.
“Omen. Bad omen,” he says in Common.
My throat tightens. My skin prickles. But I can’t look away.
The skull terrifies me—the size of it, the thought of crawling inside, of hiding in the hollow head of something that once ruled this desert.
And yet… the air inside looks still. The storm batters its crown and whistles through its cracked sockets, but the cavern behind its jaws is sheltered, shadowed, quiet.
Shelter.
The scarred warrior doesn’t hesitate. He turns toward the gaping mouth, his braid whipped by the gale, scars stark in the grit. His gaze sweeps back once, sharp and commanding. No words. He doesn’t need them.
Joran swears, shaking his head, but even he shuffles forward when the warrior steps inside. Harlan follows, half dragged by the younger Zmaj.
I stand a moment longer, staring up at the sockets, at the teeth like white spears stabbing into the sand. My stomach churns, dread and awe twisting together until I can’t tell one from the other.
Then I move. My boots sink deep into the sand at the base of the jaw. I duck beneath one massive tooth, cold bone slick under my fingers, and step into the dark.
Inside, the wind muffles. The sand dulls to a hiss. The storm is still out there, screaming through the desert—but here, in the hollow skull of a monster, we can breathe.
For now.
The storm dulls to a distant roar. Sand rattles through the cracks and eye sockets, spilling in fine streams that pool around our boots. The air smells strange—dry bone and dust, sharp with a mineral tang that sticks to my tongue.
We huddle together. Joran slumps against one jagged molar, still cursing under his breath.
Harlan sinks to his knees and presses his forehead to the bone wall, prayers spilling out so quiet they sound like sobs.
The younger Zmaj paces tight circles, wings and tail twitching, muttering that this is wrong, that the dead watch us from their hollow graves.
And me—I sit with my back against the curve of the jaw, blanket pulled tight, listening to the sand hissing outside.
My stomach growls, raw and empty, but it’s the silence between heartbeats that claws at me most. The storm’s fury doesn’t reach us here, and without it, I hear too much.
My own breath. My pulse. The rustle of his wings as the young Zmaj warrior moves.
The scrape of his claws as he runs a hand over the bone.
The scarred warrior moves to the opening and kneels, broad shoulders blocking what little sand slips through the gap. He pulls his lochaber off his back and rests it across his knees, blade dark with dried blood. His gaze is fixed outward, steady, like he can hold back the storm itself by watching.
I tell myself to look away, to give him the same space the others do.
But my eyes refuse the thought because I don’t really want to.
I trace the ridges of his scars. Old wounds, healed rough, never hidden.
He doesn’t shrink from them. He wears them like armor.
I imagine a story that goes with each of them.
My burned arm throbs under the bandage. It will leave scars—scars of my own to mirror his.
I lift it, fingers brushing the cloth, remembering the cool touch of his hand binding it tight.
He hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t needed to. That touch was enough—rough but careful, the kind of strength that could crush but chose not to.
I wonder if he feels it too—this strange pull that’s been tugging at me since the canyon fight. That weight in his silence when his gaze lingers too long.
I shift, then stand and close the distance between us. I crouch next to him and clear my throat, the words dry before they even leave.
“You didn’t have to…” I trail off, unsure what I mean. Save me? Bind me? Carry the watch while I slept? All of it. None of it.
His eyes flick to me and then, slowly, he inclines his head. The same steady nod he gave at dawn, but heavier now, loaded with meaning I can’t quite name.
Heat crawls up my neck. My stomach twists in a way that has nothing to do with hunger. I clutch the blanket tighter, heart beating too fast for the stillness around us.
“We’ll be buried in here before the storm ends,” Joran groans, dragging a hand down his face.
The younger Zmaj snaps at him, sharp words I can’t catch. Harlan only rocks harder, whispering faster. Their fear presses close, thick as the bone walls. I look at him—scarred, silent, unmoving—and I feel something else. Not safety. Not exactly. But steadiness.
And for the first time, I wonder if what keeps me breathing in this storm is nothing more than my own stubbornness.
Outside, the storm screams, rattling the skull like a drum, but in here the sound thins to a low, steady moan.
The warrior doesn’t say anything more, so I settle into staring out with him.
He doesn’t look over or give any sign of admonishment, which is all I can go on.
He seems to accept me here at his side. Besides, if nothing else, it feels right.
I stare until my eyes ache from looking too long into the dark. Every creak of bone, every whisper of sand spilling through the sockets makes my skin prickle.
Joran has gone quiet, his curses burning out into weary mutters. Harlan rocks with his head bowed, prayers slowing to hoarse fragments. Even the younger Zmaj has settled, crouched low with his wings folded tight, though his eyes keep darting toward the back of the skull as if something waits there.
I try to close mine, but the bone at my back is too cold. My arm throbs beneath the bandage. My chest won’t stop tightening. And every time I almost drift, I feel it—the scarred warrior’s presence. Not looming, not pressing, but a steady anchor. A weight against the storm, against the fear.
Then I hear something.
Not the storm. Not the rasp of sand or the breath of the others. A scrape. Slow. Deliberate. Bone on stone.
My eyes snap open. The sound comes again, faint but closer this time. A shift in the shadows deep in the skull’s hollow.
I freeze, breath caught. For a moment I tell myself it’s only sand spilling, or bone settling under its own weight. But the sound doesn’t match. Too slow. Too measured.
The younger Zmaj stiffens, wings twitching.
His eyes flash toward the same darkness I’m staring into.
He heard it too. Joran stirs, grumbling, but the scarred warrior is already moving—silent, deliberate, rising from his post at the mouth of the skull.
Lochaber in hand. His black eyes glint as they catch mine.
He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t need to.
The scrape comes again, louder this time. Not sand. Not storm. Something alive. Something waiting.
My throat goes dry. My knife feels small, fragile in my grip.
And in the hush between heartbeats, I realize—we aren’t alone in here.