Page 44

Afrantic, heavy pounding on the woven door shattered my sleep.

"Ly-ra! Ly-ra, wake! I have need of your hands!"

I bolted upright, my heart colliding with my ribs. The room was still bathed in that eerie, silver-green glow of the bioluminescent moss, but the calm of the night had been replaced by a chaotic roar from the village platforms below—shouts, the heavy thud of drums, and a high-pitched, melodic wailing that made the hair on my neck stand up.

As I swung my legs over the edge of the furs, a sudden, slick sensation between my thighs stopped me cold.

Shit... why did that feel so real? My breath hitched. I was damp, my body still humming with a lingering, honeyed heat that felt impossibly visceral. The phantom pressure of Kaelen’s touch seemed to pulse against my skin, and the scent of the dream—sharp, electric ozone—still clung to the back of my throat.

"Ly-ra! Please!" Sora’s voice was strained, cracking with an urgency I’d never heard from her.

"Coming!" I yelled back, my voice raspy.

I scrambled to pull on my leather tunic and the wrap-around tribe leathers, my movements clumsy and rushed. I shoved the memory of the dream down, ignoring the way the fabric felt abrasive against my sensitised skin. I threw open the door.

Sora stood there, her markings flashing a panicked, erratic violet. Her hair was dishevelled, and her hands were stained with something dark and shimmering.

"I need you," she gasped, grabbing my arm. "The hunters... they have returned broken. Many of the Elders are still deep in the trance of the Alignment, and the others have gone into the canopy to hunt the threat. I have too many wounded and not enough hands."

"Wait—just a second!" I ducked back inside, diving toward the corner where my shredded flight suit was tucked away. My fingers fumbled through the scorched fabric until they closed around the small, hard plastic of my emergency survival kit. It was the only piece of Earth tech I had left—a compact tray of coagulants, a localised neuro-blocker, and a multi-tool. I shoved it into the waistband of my leathers and followed her out into the chaos.

The main platform was a nightmare. Torchlight flickered against the ancient wood of the Alu’un, illuminating a group of young hunters huddled near the centre. One male was slumped against a root, his side torn open in a jagged, weeping wound that bled iridescent silver. Two others clawed at their faces, their eyes clouded over with a milky, pulsating film.

I knelt beside the blinded hunters, my mind racing through the tracking lesson Toren had given me. The forest speaks. "Sora!" I called out. "The blue moss you use for fire-stings—what are its traits? Does it draw toxins out, or just cool the skin?"

"It... it draws the heat out," she stammered, holding a bowl of the pulpy mash.

"And the Veka sap? Toren said it 'cleanses the path.' Does it dissolve organic matter?"

"It breaks down the crystalline sap of the Alu’un," she replied.

"Then it can break this film," I muttered. I took the moss and sap and mixed them with a tiny, crushed sedative tablet from my kit.

As I reached out, one of the hunters let out a piercing, guttural shrill. He bared his teeth, his markings flaring a defensive, angry red. "Stay back, star-woman!" another hissed, his voice thick with pain. "Do not touch us with your cold blood!"

"Quiet!" Sora snapped, pushing him back. "She is here to help."

I ignored the hostility. I had seen the village healers use these pastes by rote, but they didn't understand the chemistry. I moved to the male with the torn side; his silver blood was clotting too fast, sealing an infection inside a hard, crystalline crust. I used a sharpened stone tool to scrape the crystals away, applying the sap to keep the wound draining.

The hunter groaned, but as the Earth coagulant stabilised the bleed, his violet markings settled into a steady pulse. I moved back to the blinded pair and applied my mixture to their eyelids. Slowly, the shrieking stopped. The milky film began to dissolve, receding until their golden eyes cleared. The snarling stopped, replaced by a stunned, heavy silence.

Once the crisis settled, I sat back on my heels, my hands covered in silver blood.

"What happened?" I asked the lead hunter. "Toren said the village was supposed to be private tonight."

The hunter spat onto the platform, his markings dim with exhaustion. "We were led astray. We followed the scent of a wounded Kiri-cat, but it was a lure. We were pulled into a trap in the low-mist valleys."

"By who?" I asked, my heart sinking.

Sora's fingers trembled on my shoulder. "The Vakras," she whispered. "The scavengers of the deep roots."

"What exactly are they?" I asked, looking around at the wounded. "Are they... like you? Another tribe?"

The lead hunter let out a visceral shrill—a sound of pure loathing. He turned his head and spat on the floor in disgust, his upper lip curling back. "Do not speak of them as kin," he growled. "They are the greatest disharmony, Ly-ra. They do not follow the Pulse; the Alu’un itself rejects them. The Great Life refuses their touch."

Sora leaned in closer, her voice dropping to a sombre hue. "They are cruel, Ly-ra. They do not hunt for meat; they hunt to break. They thrive in the rotting darkness of the deep roots where the light of the moons cannot reach. They survive through theft, shadow, and a brutality that has no place in the song of our people."

"But are they the same species?" I pressed.