“Like me,” I say, before I can stop myself.
He looks at me then, really looks, his expression tightening just slightly.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Like you.”
The words sit heavier than they should.
I swallow against it, forcing my focus back to the ground.
“These lines are fresh enough,” I say, shifting my stance. “Not recent, but not gone either.”
“They cycle through,” he adds. “Wind erases it, they run it again.”
“So it’s active,” I say.
“Very.”
The realization settles into something sharper, something that cuts through the exhaustion and pain and everything else weighing me down.
“They’re still doing it,” I say, my voice tightening. “Even after?—”
“Even after Tury,” he finishes.
I nod once.
“He didn’t just stumble into something,” I say. “He interrupted it.”
“And they made sure he didn’t do it again,” Hrask replies.
I turn slightly, looking out along the path the lines carve through the desert, following it as far as the distortion will let me.
“This goes back to the border,” I say.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Or close enough to it.”
I exhale slowly, the air catching in my chest before I force it out.
“We’re not done,” I say.
He doesn’t respond right away, and I glance at him, expecting hesitation, expecting that same resistance from before.
Instead—
He nods.
“Yeah,” he says simply. “I know.”
I blink at him.
“That’s it?” I ask. “No argument, no ‘we need a plan,’ no lecture about consequences?”
He huffs a breath, something almost like a laugh slipping through.
“You want me to fight you on it again?” he asks.
“Kind of,” I admit. “At least then it’d feel normal.”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Well, normal didn’t work out so great last time.”
