The descent from the windswept ridge became an exercise in patience and pain. Every step that Zuberi made on the loose scree threatened to skid downhill; every minor slip sent a sharp stab of protest through his calves and battered knees. He wedged his spear point deep into gravel, testing each footfall as though the slope itself were a live thing that might shrug him off at any moment. Fine shards of stone hissed down the incline, clicking away into the dusk.
Behind him came Lisa's lighter tread. She never stepped directly into his prints, but instead glided in subtle diagonals—adjusting for hidden pockets of shale before they shifted. He could almost sense her quiet mapping of risk, as if she read invisible fault lines in the stone or tracked the faint pulses of the wind. Every so often she paused, fingers brushing a new ledge for the barest instant, then moved on with silent certainty.
Farther back, Hanz followed. His shoulders rode high, tension thrumming through muscle: not fear, Zuberi thought, but expectation—like a bowstring pulled taut. The shadow‑weapon rested against his thigh. Each time his boot scraped, the barrel tilted as though tasting the dark, ready to spill its black charge.
Mid‑slope, Eli clung to the ridged back of his guardian. The creature—Shifty—placed her clawed feet with uncanny grace, tail counterbalancing each step. Even exhausted, her hide pulsed faint color washes: stone‑brown when she hugged the rock, dusk‑mauve when she crossed open air. Her steady rhythm anchored the boy, whose arms trembled from fatigue yet refused to let go. Bruises speckled his shins, dust streaked his curls, but his eyes stayed bright with stubborn resolve.
Above them, the sky clotted from violet to inky blue. The first stars pierced thin clouds like sparks from hammered iron. Wind scoured the ridge, carrying the smell of cold dust and the faint metallic aftertaste of earlier mayhem. Zuberi inhaled, throat raw, and led them onward until the slope eased at last.
A shallow depression, half shelter and half trap, peeled back from the cliffside: a wind‑gnawed cradle of stone just deep enough to break the gale. Zuberi halted, took measure of the bowl‑like floor, then nodded. "This will have to do." His voice came out rough but certain.
He waited for Lisa and Hanz to step clear, then dropped his pack beside a pillar of fractured basalt. Sparse shrubs rooted in cracks, clutching life in gray fists. The ground was a patchwork of gravel, packed soil, and shards of flint that gleamed when the wind rolled them over. Not perfect—but defensible, and they were out of daylight.
Lisa scanned the hollow's rim. "No fresh scat, no drag marks," she murmured. "Rock absorbs footprints after the first gust. If anything lairs here, the wind hides its trail."
Zuberi accepted that observation as gospel. "Good enough." He loosened the rabbit he'd tied hours earlier and laid it on a flat slab. One meager carcass for five hungry bodies. Necessity trumped dignity.
He turned to Hanz. "We need more," he said. He patted the rabbit once. "Your shadow‑weapon dropped silverbacks. Will it bring down smaller game?" he asked.
Hanz rolled the arm in his palms, dark barrel reflecting a ribbon of starlight. "It doesn't shoot at something," he confessed. "Feels like I will the darkness out—then it slams whatever's within reach." He shrugged. "But I can track rock‑runner burrows. Give me dusk and twenty minutes."
"Take them," Zuberi said. "Mind the wind. Anything small and edible."
Hanz gave a two‑finger salute, slipped over the rim, and vanished into rising night.
Zuberi faced Lisa next. "Fire." He tapped the cleared circle of earth. "Dry brush, dead branches, nothing green." He lowered his voice. "Sense the perimeter as you gather. If something feels wrong, abandon the wood and return."
Lisa nodded, already turning aside. Within moments her silhouette thinned against the cliff wall, merging with stone.
Finally he knelt before Eli and Shifty. The boy looked close to collapse yet held his shoulders stiff, as if bracing for disappointment. Zuberi softened his tone. "Stay in sight of the fire ring. Collect bigger limbs. Shifty—" he met the creature's narrow, intelligent eye "—see if she knows safe tubers. Only what she confirms."
Eli's spine straightened. "She'll find some," he said. Shifty chuffed, frills flickering amber at the praise.
Work commenced. Zuberi cleared the center of the hollow, rolling larger stones into a rough pentagon to corral sparks. Kneeling, he slit the rabbit from breastbone to tail, peeling tawny fur with practiced flicks. Memories crept in—savanna nights, cousins crowding near the spit, the smell of cumin and smoke. Those recollections hurt, so he tucked them beneath duty and kept his hands moving.
Lisa returned twice, arms laden with brittle scrub and finger‑thick branches. Each time, she placed the load just inside the ring, then drifted along the perimeter, fingers skimming rock. On her third pass she paused at a shadowed cleft, head cocked. After a heartbeat she stepped backward, expression tight, and chose a different path. Zuberi didn't ask; trust was simpler.
Eli and Shifty operated like one organism. The boy pointed, the creature sniffed, frills dilating in color-coded signals: dull gold for safe, rust‑red for poisonous. They brought armfuls of dry limbs and a modest heap of knobbly roots still dusted with soil. Zuberi thanked them and saw Eli straighten at the acknowledgment.
Starlight had sharpened when Hanz resurfaced, silent as rumor. Two hefty rock‑runners dangled by their tails, stiff from a snap of darkness. "Ran in zig‑zags," Hanz muttered, pride gleaming beneath fatigue. "Shadow‑blast pinned them. Not pretty, but it works." He dropped them beside Zuberi and wiped his hand on his coat.
Soon sparks caught tinder. The newborn flame breathed, shivering in the wind's tunnel before gathering strength. Zuberi fed it slivers of shrub until a low tongue of orange whispered up. They circled closer, relief in every exhale. Lisa fed the growing blaze thicker sticks; Eli set the roots nearby to roast; Hanz squatted to skin one rock‑runner while Zuberi finished the rabbit.
They roasted meat on sharpened branch skewers. Fat dripped, sizzled, flared. The smell—gamey, earthy—stirred everyone's stomachs. When the first piece browned, Zuberi passed it to Eli. The boy blinked, then tore a strip free with his teeth. Shifty observed, eyes half‑lidded, content with warmth.
They ate quietly, the night amplifying every chew, every crackle. When the meal dwindled to gnawed bones and bitter root peels, Hanz sat back, wiping grease from his chin. "Need water tomorrow," he said. "Shadow‑blast can't fix thirst."
Zuberi nodded. "We saw shrubs thickening to the west," he said. "That means moisture underground." He looked at Lisa. "Tomorrow at dawn, you and I search for a seep or a spring."
She agreed, her voice a smoky whisper. "I'll know if we're close. The air changes."
The fire shrank to red embers. Wind funneled across the hollow's lip, but the stone ring kept coals bright. Zuberi rose, scanning the approaches. "I'll take first watch," he said. "Hanz, wake me after the moon reaches the ridge line." The man grunted assent, curling on his side near the outer wall.
Lisa lay against a boulder, knees drawn up. Eli settled beside her, too polite to lean but comforted by proximity. Shifty circled once, then coiled protectively around the boy, tail draping his boots. Within minutes both child and guardian slipped into sleep, their breathing almost synchronized. Lisa took longer, eyes flicking open each time wind shifted, but eventually she surrendered, shoulders slackening. Only Zuberi remained upright.
He moved to a narrow ledge where he could see both entrances. Spear across his knees, he let the quiet seep in. The moan of air across stone, the distant chirr of night insects, the aura of cooling rock under starlight—all sharpened his senses. In that hush, something deeper stirred: the memory of luminescent lines beneath his skin, captured by Lisa's gaze back in the Wraithlands; the tug of some inner fire he still barely understood.
He closed his eyes for a moment—just to blink grit away—and let the pulse of the land seep into him. Out here, mystery was endless. But one truth stood clear: every life in that hollow now pivoted on the steadiness of his watch and the promise of dawn.
Time unspooled: a stretch of still muscles, the slow crawl of constellations. At last, a soft crunch sounded from behind—Hanz, rising. Zuberi glanced at the sky: the tilted sliver of pale moon sat level with the western ridge. Two hours gone. He looked back at Hanz and nodded.
"My turn," Hanz whispered. Shadows clung to his face, but his eyes were clear.
Zuberi passed him the spear as a courtesy—wood warm from his grip—and let his own limbs sag. He settled near the glowing coals, letting their heat stroke weary bones. Lisa stirred once, perhaps sensing the watch change, then subsided. Shifty's frills pulsed, registering but not protesting.
Zuberi closed his eyes, intending only to blink away fatigue, but darkness gathered behind his lids—a darkness not of exhaustion, but of passage. The fire's scent thinned; the hollow's shape ebbed; his body felt weightless, as if drifting downward through warm sand. He sensed, more than felt, the distant hum that had greeted him after the rhino‑raptor kill: the gateway to that dream‑cave of trophies, lit by impossible light.
The edges of his consciousness blurred. Stone cooled beneath his back. Somewhere above, Hanz's boots shifted, the wind sighed, and the world of waking surrendered its hold. As Zuberi slipped toward the realm beyond bone and breath, he carried with him the crackle of embers, the slow heart of a pack newly formed, and the stubborn conviction that whatever waited inside that hidden space—System or spirit—it would have to reckon with a spear‑bearer from the savanna who refused to break.