Chapter 22 - Kage
KAGE
The pod bucks like a wild animal under my claws, metal groaning, heat bleeding through the walls. Every lurch slams me against the harness. My parents’ claws scrabble for purchase as the capsule tears down through atmosphere, rattling like it’s about to shake apart.
I pound on the hatch, my knuckles cracking the inner plating. “No! No—we have to go back!”
The memory of Bella’s face behind the closing hatch isn’t fading. It’s burned on the back of my skull, green eyes wide and blood streaking down her jaw. She slammed the controls before I could stop her. She chose.
“She saved us,” Gake growls, his arms wrapping around my shoulders, pinning me to the seat with a strength he shouldn’t still have. “She made her choice, son.”
Sorena’s claws are over her mouth, tears leaking down her scaled cheeks. “Kage,” she whispers. “Please. Stop.”
The pod tilts, slamming us into the floor as gravity bites. Flames streak past the porthole, orange and white, hissing as they shear off the heat shielding. My frills flatten from the roar outside, a constant bellow like the sky itself is screaming.
I slam my fists again, denting the hatch. “She’s out there! We can still—”
The pod shudders violently, the view spinning as the planet’s surface rushes up in a smear of gray and white. The air inside smells of scorched metal and fear.
Gake snarls in my ear. “If you tear through that hatch now, none of us will survive. None of us.”
My claws flex, trembling. I want to rip him off me. I want to tear through steel. I want to claw my way back through sky and fire and drag her out with my teeth if I have to.
Instead, the pod slams down.
The impact throws us forward. Harnesses bite into my chest. Sorena cries out, Gake’s head snaps back. A noise like mountains breaking cracks through the hull as the pod skips, bounces, then digs into the frozen earth of the northern wastes.
Silence.
I tear out of the harness before the hatch’s seals even hiss open. The air outside rushes in, sharp and cold enough to sting my lungs. It smells of snow and burned dust, a clean bite over the reek of the pod.
I stumble into the wasteland.
Above me, the sky glows faint orange, a smear of smoke trailing where the gunship fell, far to the south. The line arcs down to a distant horizon, still pulsing faintly with fire.
My knees hit the frozen ground before I know I’ve dropped. Gravel and ice cut into my palms.
A sound rips out of my chest, raw and low at first, then rising. A roar. Not a word. Not even a cry. Just a sound that splits the thin sky open, echoes off the barren hills and dies alone.
The taste of blood fills my mouth.
Bella is gone.
After that, I stop speaking.
Sorena tries to press food into my claws. “Kage,” she murmurs, voice trembling. “Eat, please.”
I stare past her. The stew’s scent—boiled roots and ration powder—turns my stomach. My body feels like an empty room.
Gake’s claws slam the table one night. “She gave her life for you,” he snarls. “For us. Don’t waste it sitting here rotting.”
I bare my teeth but don’t answer.
They try everything—stories from my childhood, old spices, music through the battered datapad. Nothing breaks through. The light’s gone from their eyes, but mine feels darker still.
I failed her. Worse, I failed the bond.
The jalshagar never survives one-sided.
Part of me knows she’s dead. Or worse—taken by that thing. But my chest still aches like something’s there, frayed but unbroken, a thread pulling tight from somewhere far away.
I drag myself out into the snow at night, looking south. The wind howls across the flats, cold enough to sting even through my scales.
Sometimes I think I hear her voice in the static.
I don’t answer.
I start building because it’s the only thing left.
Salvage from the pod. Bits of old relay towers scavenged from the wastes. Wires knotted with frost. My claws dull on metal and ice, but I keep working.
A signal repeater, cobbled together from scraps. A ghost tower to throw my call into the void.
It’s hopeless. No one’s coming.
But I build anyway.
Because if I don’t, her sacrifice means nothing.
Days blur. Weeks. My hair grows longer, frills droop. My claws split. Gake watches me with quiet eyes. Sorena mutters prayers over dead roots.
At night, when the sky’s clear, the stars burn hard and sharp above the wastes. No smoke. No fire. Just a ceiling of cold lights.
I sit in the snow, claws buried in frost, staring up. My breath ghosts in white curls.
“If you’re out there…” I whisper to the stars, voice cracked and low. “I’ll find you.”
It’s not a plea. It’s a vow.
Not because I believe.
But because hope is the only weapon I have left.