Chapter 23
GYON
Iwake to the sound of soft voices.
“Gyon…” someone murmurs.
“A lost wolf,” another adds.
I open my eyes to two suns hanging low in the sky—one amber-and-lemon, the other pale jade.
The grass around me is tall and whispering, each blade trembling in the breeze like a thousand tiny fingers.
The air tastes of ozone and wild sweetness, like rain after a dust storm on a dying world.
My body aches in familiar ways—and unfamiliar ones.
My ribs crack if I inhale too deeply. My skin burns under the light, still pulsing with residual energy I remember from the Maze’s fail-safe trigger.
I try to pull myself up. My hands hit rough bark instead of cold concrete.
“Easy, warrior,” a soft voice says.
I turn to see a woman in pale gauze robes, her hair white like moon-ice. Her eyes are closed; she leans on a staff carved with vine-patterns. “You came back to us,” she states. Not a question. A fact.
I growl low. “Why?” I ask. My voice hurts in ways I didn’t expect. “Why did you drag me from the wreckage?”
She turns and smiles. “Because you were dying. Because the wounds of war are not more sacred than the chance at peace.” She offers me a cup filled with warm root-milk and honey. I resist. She holds out the cup until my fingers wrap around it.
I drink. The taste is simple—earthy sweetness, a faint tang of something ancient. Not whiskey or fire-liquor; no, something purer and gentler. I swallow twice before I can speak again.
“Where am I?” I mutter.
“A new place. A new chance,” she answers. “We are the Solari. We farm the land. We heal the wounded. We ask nothing of you but your presence.”
Her words churn inside me like acid. I push myself upright. My armor—half melted, twisted—lies in a heap behind a dome of pale clay. I walk over to it, feeling each step like a punishment. One of the towers overhead spins slow, creaking. Wind farms. Vineyards sloping off past the fields.
I lift the helmet with one hand and stare. The visor is cracked. The Reaper clan emblem still glows faintly silver in the dim light. I drop the helmet. It hits the ground with a thud. “I’m a weapon,” I say. “Not a farmer.”
A voice—male, young—calls from behind me. “You can be both.” I turn. A boy not older than ten stands holding a sickle the size of his wrist. He watches me with bright eyes.
I crouch near him. “What’s your name?”
He grins. “Aren. Want to help?”
“My hands…” My hand flicks a bloody residue from the sickle’s edge. “They kill.”
He shrugs. “These kill too—these cut grain. I’ll show you.”
I glance at the field beyond—the sunrise-grain shimmering gold like waves. I swallow. “Fine.”
Later, the sun nearly overhead, I’m trudging across that field, the sickle heavy in my hand. Each swing slices through stalks that brush my skin. The smell: dry earth, pollen, sweat. My muscles ache. My ribs protest. The quiet is louder than any battle cry I’ve heard.
I hear the woman with the staff approach. “Pain makes you honest,” she says as she walks beside me. “Better to accept the hurt than to deny it.”
I swing the sickle the wrong way. It catches and halts mid-cut. I swear and yank it free. “I’m not your lesson,” I say.
She tucks a strand of white hair behind her ear. “You are exactly that,” she replies. “You were made for war—but war doesn’t heal you. You must choose what you will use the rest of your life for.”
I look at the field. “I used to kill. I smelled death for breakfast, roared for dinner, and fought for dessert.”
She doesn’t smile. “Then you are wounded. Healing is valid.”
I bite my lip. The wind kicks up, grains brushing my bare arms, slapping against my skin like cold fingers. I close my eyes. I taste metal in the air. I hear the hum of the wind towers in the distance—they sound like sighs.
I open my eyes and swing again. This time I get a clean cut. A stalk falls. I stare at the blade, at my hand, at the grass. I realize: my muscles remember the motion. The logic behind the fall doesn’t matter. The body responds.
That night I sleep for the first time in months without waking to nightmares.
The dome’s guest chamber is simple: a cot of woven reeds, blanket thin but warm; the hum of vines outside the window chopping through the darkness like gears.
I lie on my side, pull the blanket up to my chest. Sweat cools into clammy sheets.
Dreams find me: Liora’s voice echoes in black corridors. My name. A beam splinters above us. She whispers, “Don’t go.” I wake with my claws dug into the mattress, nails scratching shredded fibers, my heart racing.
But I don’t leave the bed.
Morning—two suns and a faint haze—I rise and go to the courtyard. The Solari greet me, nod gently. No fanfare. I nod back.
A child—Aren—runs up with a basket of grapes. He holds one out. “Eat.”
The sweetness bursts in my mouth. Warm grape-juice trickles down my chin. For a moment I forget the war. I forget the weapons. I forget the roar of collapsing tunnels and the weight of Gyon. I swallow the grape. The sweetness lingers.
I say thank you.
Then I walk away.
Tayani finds me again that afternoon. She leans on her staff along the vines. “You want to go back,” she says quietly.
I stop pruning a vine. “Why would I stay?”
“Because you are wounded. You can heal here. Or you can drift.”
I laugh—low, harsh. “Healing is for the weak.”
Her faint smile curls. “And killing is for the damned.” She turns away.
I am left with the vine. My hand closes around the sappy shoot. My body remembers strength. I bend the vine back.
Something unsaid hangs between us.
Night falls. I pace near the firepit again. The coals glow orange, hissing embers pop. I pick up the stones I gathered—a row. I carve the glyphs anew. My fingers bloodied. The smell of scorched rock and ink fills the air. I whisper her name: “Liora.”
Footsteps. I lift my head. Aren stands there, small under the starlight. “Sir Gyon?” he says. “You show vines and fire. You’re not like the others.”
I grin, fleeting. “No. I’m not.”
He nods. “Good.” He crouches next to the stones. “Why you carve names?”
I close my eyes. “Because names are anchors. They keep you from drifting.” I push a stone aside.
He picks it up. Examines the glyph. “What language?”
“Old Reaper,” I reply. “Clan script.”
His eyes widen. “Cool.”
I straighten. “Go inside. See the elder.”
He runs off.
I turn back to the sky. The stars wink like embers. I breathe deep. My scars still burn beneath my shirt. My stomach twists with hunger—for battle? For her? For something real.
“Don’t go,” her voice echoes.
I clench my fist. “I’ll find you.”
Whether it’s here or there, whether she knows or not—I will.
I drop the bucket into the trough with a clank, the metal rim ringing in the air like a bell of obligation.
The Solari animals line up—goats with gentle eyes, sheared-wool sheep, small green-horned grazers I’ve never seen.
I raise the bucket and the water sloshes, cold on my forearm.
The scent of damp earth fills my nostrils, mingled with hay and animal-warm fur.
My ribs ache. My joints screech in protest.
“Careful there, warrior,” Tayani says behind me, soft but firm. “It’s not a charge run. It’s watering.”
I set the bucket down. Her voice always comes in when the world is quietest. I hate that kind of calm.
“Right,” I grunt.
Sweat trickles from the back of my neck. The sun is climbing. The fields pulse with life—vineyards shimmering in pale green, wind towers turning lazily overhead. Nothing explodes. Nothing screams. No one calls out my name to attack. No strategy. No war. Just this.
I set to feed the grazers—loose chunks of grain, clinks of feed bowls, the animals crunching their guts. One goat leans in and butts my arm with her head. I swear. “Look, you stupid—”
Tayani clears her throat. “You’ll be better tomorrow.”
I don’t look at her. Instead I bend to pick up a fallen tool, a rusted pitchfork no one will miss. The ground here is soft—soggy from dew—my boots sink an inch each step. My balance wavers. I hate the softness. In war, you knew the ground could crack under you. Here, it just tilts and yawns.
I stab the pitchfork into the earth to steady myself, and a twitch of vine wraps around the tines. I pull it free, jerked to one side. I curse. “Damn it.”
A younger Solari watcher offers a gentle smile, holds out his hand. “You’re doing fine.”
“Doing fine is the shape of a broken blade,” I mutter and walk off.
Tayani is watching me from the vines. She tilts her head. “You must live well enough to deserve its return.”
I don’t answer. I just keep walking. At the edge of the vineyards, a fence line of low posts marks the boundary between the cultivated vines and the wild of whispergrass and whisperwind beyond.
I climb over the last post and stand on the worm-soft earth.
The sky reaches out wide. Stars… not yet visible. Too early. Sun sinking.
I stare upward. Nothing moves. The emptiness echoes.
I hear my own heart. I smell the hay and wind-metal fragrance of the tower behind me. My hands close into fists at my sides and my knuckles go white.
“Lost something,” I hear someone behind me say.
I turn. Tayani standing in the shadow of the building, vines curling near her feet. “Yes.”
“What?”
I rub the back of my neck. “I lost something.”
Her shadow reaches me. She lays a hand on my shoulder. “Then you must live well enough to deserve its return.”
Cold. Firm. Minimal. The kind of consolation that sits like a rock.
I nod. “Yeah.”
She smiles like sorrow and wisdom intertwined. Then she steps back and disappears into the vineyard dusk.
I stay where I am. Night comes. The suns set. The heavens shift and the first stars prick open. I watch them. My eyes strain. I wait.
Every night I do this. Sometimes I swear I see her face. Liora’s face. Her hair loose, blowing in an alien wind. Her eyes bright silver in my mind. Her voice whispering, “Gyon…”
My body jolts. I grind my teeth. The sky just stares back.
I climb down, head heavy, and sit next to the firepit by the dome. The coals are glowing red. The smell of char and wood rising. I pick one of the smooth stones I carved earlier, hold it in my lap. The carvings—her name, the clan glyphs—my fingers tracing them.
“Papa?” A child voice.
I look up. A little girl stands across the fire. The moonlight (or one of the twin moons) catches her hair. I can’t tell yet if I recognize her. But she smiles at me.
“Want story?”
“No,” I say. “Go inside.”
She shakes her head. “Please.”
I stand. “Fine. But this is the last one.”
She’s crouched now next to me, hands on her knees. “Tell me about the crash.” Her eyes curious. Silver? No—they’re brown in the dull lamps of the dome. But I know.
I grip a stone and set it aside. I open my mouth. I haven’t done this in years.
“Okay,” I say. The wind picks up. The grass rustles. “We were in the Maze. The corridors collapsed. Light went white. She—He—” I pause. “Liora was beside me. We ran. I told her to run. She said: ‘I’m staying.’”
She closes her eyes. A slow breeze cools my hair. The smell of smoke from the earlier firepit floats. “What happened?”
I stare at her small face. Calm. Open. I can’t answer. Not yet. Instead I push the stone into her hands and say, “Your name.”
She tilts her head. “It’s Pepper.”
The sharpness in me doubles. I look away. The girl disappears into the dark of the dome without a word.
I am left alone. With the raw ache in my chest. My ribcage still cracked. My mind splitting with images.
I pick up another stone, stand, and walk toward the vines. I set the stone at the base of a vine trunk. My fingers trace the carved letters once more. The ground is cool beneath my boots. The night wind whispers.
“The stars,” I murmur to them. “Send her back.”
Silence.
I run a hand through my hair. The thrill of fight still tugs inside me. The scream inside me still hunts. But here, I’m silent. Here, I bend and toil. I harvest sunrise-grain. I feed animals. I sweep dust from paths. I do chores that have no glory.
And it frustrates me because I should be doing war. I should be taking her back. I should be roaring. But right now, I’m planting roots in soft earth. The soil holds my blood and doesn’t ask why.
I pump water. I lift grain sacks. I blaze through every glare, every sigh, every soft voice. I don’t say much. I don’t fight. But my body aches, and that’s the battle.
One afternoon I find Tayani again near the harvested field. She’s cutting grain by herself, her sickle slicing slowly in the golden light.
I lean against a post. She studies me. “You’re bleeding.”
My fingers are red-stained from the edge of a stalk. “From a field.”
“Pain is honesty,” she says again.
I nod.
She straightens. “It will serve you.”
I breathe out through my nose. I stare at the horizon where the twin suns hang pale. I taste dust and heat and… something like hope.
We don’t speak often after that. The nights lengthen. I keep the fire going. I keep carving stones. I keep climbing the fence line and pressing my face to the sky. Waiting. Watching. Listening for the faint hum of a ship or the ghost of her boots on a corridor.
My nightmares come back. The collapse. The lights. Her scream. I wake with sweat and rage. But now I don’t fight them. I ride them until they fade.
One night I wake and I swear the stars are falling, auroras in the sky bending downward. I feel a thrum in the distance. The ship’s hum? I shut my eyes. I hope.
I am no longer sure if this place is healing me or holding me captive. But I know I cannot stay forever.
Because I lost her.
And I won’t lose myself.