I dismounted, my legs shaking so badly I nearly fell. My muscles screamed in protest after hours on the kuda's back. Starfield nudged my shoulder gently with her nose, and I pressed my hand against her neck for a moment, drawing strength from her solid warmth.
"Thank you," I whispered to her, meaning it with every fiber of my being.
Then I followed the warriors into the night, leading Starfield behind me.
The village seemed to spring up out of nowhere—one moment we were walking through darkness and stone, the next we'd crossed some invisible threshold into a settlement that looked like it had grown organically from the mountain itself.
Buildings rose directly from the rock, their walls a seamless blend of stone and wood and materials I couldn't identify that appeared shaped by nature rather than tools. Organic curves instead of hard angles. Surfaces that flowed like water frozen mid-motion, preserved in eternal grace. Nothing like the salvaged metal structures of Fange City with their rusted seams and bolted-together desperation, their patchwork ugliness.
This was something else entirely. Something ancient and deliberate.
Villagers emerged from their homes, silent and watchful, their dark eyes tracking my every movement with unsettling intensity. Men, women, children—all of them with that same burnished bronze skin, those same impossible eyes, that same fiber-optic hair pulsing with light in individual colors and rhythms.
I felt exposed. Vulnerable. Scrutinized.
Human.
So utterly, completely human in a place where humanity meant nothing.
The warriors led me deeper into the settlement. The air smelled of something sharp and clean—ozone and stone and something else I couldn't identify, something that made my sinuses burn slightly.
We stopped in front of the largest structure, its entrance framed by those same geometric patterns that covered everything here, glowing faintly with its own internal light.
One of the warriors spoke—a single word that sounded like a command, resonant and final.
The entrance opened.
Not a door. The stone itself shifted, flowing aside like water, revealing a passage lit by flickering torches.
The warriors gestured for me to enter.
I took a deep, shaking breath and stepped inside.
The chamber was circular, carved from wood that still bore the marks of whatever tools—or powers—had shaped it. More torches lined the walls at regular intervals, casting everything in soft light that seemed to pulse in time with the fiber-optic strands in the Welati's hair. The synchronization was hypnotic, disorienting.
And in the center of the chamber, seated at a long carved table, was an elderly female.
Age had carved wisdom into every line of her face, etching experience into her features, yet she moved with the fluid certainty of someone who had never questioned her right to command. Her skin was that same burnished bronze, but it held a quality that made my breath catch—a subtle luminescence, as if she'd swallowed starlight years ago and it now glowed beneath the surface of her flesh.
Sharp, severe cheekbones framed a face that was simultaneously beautiful and intimidating, her features possessing an almost blade-like precision. High forehead, strong jaw, lips that looked carved from stone.
Thick black braids cascaded past her waist, heavy and elaborate, and woven throughout were strands pulsing with soft blue and silver light in rhythmic patterns. A heartbeat made visible. Slower than the warriors'. More deliberate. More controlled.
Ancient.
Her eyes were black—not the deep brown that people sometimes called black, but true, absolute black from edge to edge. No white sclera, no distinction between iris and pupil. Just fathomless darkness, like staring into the space between stars, into the void itself.
Yet somehow those impossible eyes conveyed everything—intelligence, curiosity, judgment, power, and something else. Something that looked almost like compassion.
Intricate markings traced across her temples and down the column of her neck in precise geometric patterns, and I realized with a jolt that they weren't tattoos. They existed beneath her skin, glowing softly, patterns that shifted subtly as she moved, reorganizing themselves into new configurations like living circuitry responding to her thoughts.
She studied me for a long moment, those black eyes taking in every detail—my disheveled appearance, my human fragility, my obvious desperation.
Then she spoke—and her voice was like wind through the trees, ancient and powerful and utterly alien.
But I understood her. Somehow her words made it through the translator implanted in my skull, converting the alien sounds into meaning.
"You are not the human female we gifted the stone."
