Kael slows without a word. Elyssara follows suit, alert but calm. The heat still clings to her skin, but the edge has dulled.Her head clears just enough to notice the way Kael’s jaw tightens.
“Relax your posture. We don’t need to look any more like a threat than we already do,” he says, moving steadily on both feet despite the hunger. The thirst.
“Wearea threat,” Elyssara says through gritted teeth, stumbling slightly, but ready. “And I don’t care who knows it.”
Kael stiffens incrementally. “Here… you should.”
Elyssara swallows thickly, but silence is all she offers.
They walk for a while.
At the sight of their weapons and leathers, people of the boundary pull threadbare curtains over exposed window frames—as if that could keep out danger.
Parents shout for their children already hiding in abandoned structures.
Doors slam shut.
And the Outside descends into an endless hush.
The kind of quiet that precedes danger.
Elyssara feels it settle over her skin like judgment—not fear of what she might do, but certainty of what power always does.
They stop before a small dwelling set back from the others, half-hidden behind a low wall of stacked stone. A pot simmers over a fire outside, steam curling into the cooling air.
Kael moves toward the small home.
Elyssara follows, but her eyes catch on an older woman through the window—tawny skin, deep creases at the corners of her eyes from a life spent smiling, eyes of rich chocolate.
Her home flickers with candlelight, and the sound of conversation over a meal.
Her laughter spills from the room as her head tips back in unbridled joy. The woman’s midnight-black hair falls in long, cascading waves down her back, and Elyssara smiles. Smiles,because finding happiness in darkness is the greatest rebellion against oppression—it reminds her of Ronyn.
“Here,” Kael says, and strides toward the splintered door only half-hanging on its hinges.
For the first time since the desert, his shoulders ease. This place seems natural to him.
The door flies open before he can reach for it, and the woman steps forward without hesitation, her body crashing into his with the kind of intensity that only comes from missing someone with your whole being. She draws back and cups his face in both hands before he can stop her, thumbs pressing into his cheeks like she’s confirming he’s real.
“You’re thinner,” she says, though not unkindly. No, she says it with fondness.Familiarity.
He huffs a breath that might be a laugh. “You say that every time, Aunt Kiva.”
Aunt Kiva.
The words land like a war hammer.
Kael never speaks of family.Certainlynever from Caeloria.
“That’s because it’s always true, my boy,” she laughs, looking up at him from her petite stature. “Well, come in. Must be serious business if you’ve come back.”
Kiva spins in the doorway, relaxed in Kael’s presence, despite the narrowed eye she keeps on Elyssara.
“I can offer you day-old bread. No water to spare today,” Kiva says, already dragging a knife through the too-stiff loaf.
“We gratefully accept anything you can offer,” Kael says, bowing his head in gratitude.
A towering, gruff man pushes himself up from a low-lying chair. “Kael,” the man grunts, extending his forearm.
