The first breath was a mistake.
It wasn’t air. It was a razor-edged storm of ice and pine, a violent shock to lungs that had known only the stale, recycled breath of the deep earth for a lifetime. It burned, searing her throat and chest, and she collapsed onto the frozen ground, her body wracked with a coughing fit so violent it felt like her ribs would crack through her skin.
Snow. It was a myth, a story the elders told children to explain the cold that seeped through the rock. It was real. It was sharp, and it was melting against the feverish heat of her face, leaving trails of frigid water that felt like tears.
Gata.
His name was not a thought but a physical blow, a fist of ice that struck her in the gut. She saw him again, not as he had been in the dim light of the mines—strong, determined, his face set with the same grim purpose as her own—but as he was in that final, shattering moment. The look in his eyes—not of fear, but of fierce, triumphant sacrifice—as he shoved her upward into the maintenance shaft. The sound of the Cavekeeper’s metallic claws scrabbling for purchase on the ice. The thunderous crack as the surface gave way. The last glimpse of his hand, reaching, before the churning, black water swallowed him, the monster, and the silence forever.
A sound tore from her own throat, a guttural, animalistic thing that was half sob, half scream. She pressed her forehead into the freezing snow, her fists clenching and unclenching, driving her short, broken nails into her palms. The pain was a distant echo, a minor nuisance against the cataclysmic agony that had taken up residence in her soul.
She was alone. The last free Niraxi. The only proof.
For a long, terrifying moment, the thought was a siren’s call, promising the sweet oblivion of simply lying down. To let the cold take her. To follow him into the quiet dark.
But duty was a harder thing than stone. It was forged in the mines, tempered by the lash, and sharpened by every whispered story of a sunlit world they had never seen. Gata had not died so she could give up. He had died for this. For this one, agonizing breath of clean air. For this chance.
With a groan that seemed to wrench her very bones from their sockets, Sarka pushed herself up. She rose to her knees, her body a symphony of pain. Muscles screamed from the climb, joints ached from the cold, and the spiritual weight of her scarification felt heavier than a mountain. She blinked, her enormous black eyes, perfect instruments for a world of shadow, struggling to adjust to the blinding, all-encompassing white.
The world was not white. It was a thousand shades of blinding light. The sky above was a pale, washed-out grey, a ceiling she had never imagined. The trees were black skeletons clawing at it. And the air… the air was alive.
She pushed herself to her feet, swaying. Every instinct screamed at her to find cover, to burrow back into the comforting embrace of rock. But there was only rock behind her—the tomb she had just escaped. The only way forward was into this terrifying, beautiful, endless expanse.
Grief was a luxury. Fear was a weakness. She had a purpose.
Sarka took another breath, this one slower, more controlled. She ignored the cold, the pain, the soul-shattering loss. She looked out across the vast, alien landscape, her face a mask of grim determination. The warrior was all that was left. The sister was buried under a frozen lake with her brother. And the warrior had work to do.
She ran until her lungs burned and the frozen air became a solid wall she could no longer break through. The blizzard was her ally, a shroud of white noise and driving sleet that erased her tracks and muffled the sounds of her flight. But the storm was also a cage, and its bars were closing in. The world dissolved into a vortex of grey and white, the ground a treacherous, shifting blanket that tried to pull her down with every step.
The fire in her veins, the legacy of a life spent in the spectrocite-chilled dark, was a curse now. It pushed back the lethal cold, but it also betrayed her. Where she fell to her knees to rest, the snow around her melted, turning to slush and then refreezing into a brittle, glassy crust. It was a trail a blind child could follow. She pushed on, fueled by the image of Gata vanishing into the black water, until her legs, powerful from years of climbing and lifting, finally gave out.
The last thing she saw before collapsing was the steam rising from her own body, a ghostly plume in the freezing air. Then, darkness.
The first thing to return was sound. A low, guttural laugh, rough as gravel. Then a voice, slurred with some kind of fermented spirit.
“…look at this. She’s melted the damn snow around her.”
Sarka’s eyes fluttered open. Two hulking shapes loomed over her, their features obscured by thick, fur-lined hoods. The words were garbled, a coarse dialect of the Common Tongue she’d pieced together from the smuggled texts, but the meaning was clear: strange… hot… found.
A heavy, gloved hand clamped onto her arm, the grip like iron. “…not going anywhere.”
They hauled her to her feet. Her legs buckled, and they half-dragged, half-carried her through the blinding storm. A settlement emerged from the white haze—a collection of low, sod-roofed huts and a central longhouse built from rough-hewn timber. They kicked open the heavy hide-door and threw her inside.
She landed hard on a floor packed with dirt and straw. The air was thick with the heat of a central fire pit and the stench of unwashed bodies. A dozen men and a few hard-looking women turned to stare.
The camp leader, a man with a braided grey beard, rose from a throne-like chair. He circled her slowly, his gaze predatory.
“…well, well… a prize… look at her. Skin like a corpse, eyes like polished stones.” He nudged her with the toe of his boot. “…tattoos. Some kind of tribal savagery…”
One of the men who found her chimed in. “…out in the drifts… cookin’ the snow…”
Joric’s eyes widened. “…a furnace in her flesh, is it?” He knelt, grabbing her chin and forcing her head up. She met his gaze with a flat, cold emptiness. He didn’t like that. He slapped her, a sharp, stinging blow. “…no fear in her, either. Good.”
He stood and addressed the room. “…genuine rarity. A freak of the frozen wastes!… in the pen. Let the men look their fill… entertainment.”
Two men grabbed her arms and began tearing at her clothes. The simple, durable trousers and tunic she’d worn in the mines ripped away. The sudden chill on her bare skin was a shock, but it was nothing compared to the hot wave of humiliation as they stripped her naked in the firelight, a spectacle for the jeering crowd.
A hush fell over the longhouse, replaced by low, murmuring whispers of awe and crude appraisal.
“Sweet mother,” one breathed. “Look at the size of her. Taller than any man here.”
“But thin,” another rasped, his eyes roaming her form. “Like a willow. But not a soft bit on her. Look at that.”
They did look. Her skin was the color of cream, so pale it seemed to glow in the firelight, a stark canvas for the story written across it. It was stretched taut over a frame of lean, dense muscle. The lines of her abdomen were sharply defined, her arms and legs corded with the sinewy strength of someone who had fought gravity her entire life. There was no softness, no hint of the indulgence they knew. She was all function and form, a creature built for work and war.
But it was the markings that held their gaze. Dark, intricate scars that weren’t scars at all, but raised patterns of whorls and sharp, geometric lines. They covered her shoulders, snaked down her spine, and coiled around her forearms. They weren’t the crude, drunken ink of a sailor; they were precise, ancient, and deeply spiritual.
“Look at her hair,” a woman whispered, pointing. “Like straw spun from gold.” The short, thick braids were a startling contrast to her pale skin, catching the firelight like threads of metal. “And no other hair… nothing.” It was true. Her body was utterly smooth, save for the braids on her head and the small, silver ring pierced through one nipple, a simple, unexpected adornment that seemed infinitely out of place.
Joric stepped closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that the others leaned in to hear. “Legends,” he breathed, his eyes tracing the line of a scar that ran from her hip to the bottom of her ribs. “Old miners’ tales. Things that live in the deep places. Skin like bone, eyes like pits. They said they were just stories.”
He reached out, not to strike, but to touch. His thick, calloused finger traced the path of one of the raised markings on her flank. The touch was electric, a violation that made her flinch involuntarily. The men watched, mesmerized, as his finger followed the intricate design down towards her hip. It wasn’t the leer of a man looking at a woman; it was the intense, unnerving curiosity of a man examining a rare and dangerous artifact he didn’t understand.
“Feel that?” Joric murmured, pulling his hand back but not breaking eye contact. “She’s hot as a forge. And hard as iron.” He looked at his men, a cruel smile playing on his lips. “But I bet there’s parts of her that are soft as silk. Isn’t that right, boys?”
A chorus of rough agreement filled the air. The atmosphere shifted from simple curiosity to something darker, more possessive. They weren’t just looking at a captive anymore; they were looking at a conquest, a mystery to be unraveled by force.
“Take her to the pen,” Joric commanded, his voice once again loud and booming.
They dragged her, bare and exposed, toward the back of the longhouse. They threw her inside the reinforced pen, the impact knocking the air from her lungs. The heavy door slammed shut, the bolt sliding home with a deafening finality.
Sarka lay on the dirty straw, naked and shivering—not from the cold, but from a rage so pure it felt like a separate being living inside her. She let them see a broken, defeated creature. She let them laugh.
But in the darkness behind her eyelids, she did not see Gata’s face. She saw Joric’s throat. And she began to plan.
The days bled into one another, a monotonous cycle of humiliation and simmering rage. She was the camp’s favorite entertainment. They’d gather by her pen, jeering and throwing scraps of gristle and stale bread. She ate everything, her Niraxi metabolism a furnace that converted their garbage into fuel. She remained curled in the corner, playing the part of the broken, exotic creature, but her enormous black eyes missed nothing. She learned their faces, their names, their rhythms. She learned the creak of the gate hinge, the sound of the guard’s boots on the hard-packed earth, the way Joric always checked the lock on the pen himself before turning in for the night. Her understanding of their guttural speech grew with each passing day, the words sharpening from meaningless noise into clear, ugly intent.
On the seventh night, the wind began to howl. A blizzard was coming, the kind that could bury the camp for days. The fire in the longhouse roared, and the men were drunker than usual, huddling close for warmth and courage.
Joric swaggered over to her pen, his face flushed with ale and arrogance. He unlocked the gate himself, waving his men back.
“I’ll be taming the beast tonight,” he slurred, to a chorus of cheers and lewd suggestions. “Going to see if that furnace body is as hot on the inside.”
He stepped into the pen, the heavy thud of the gate closing behind him echoing in the sudden quiet. He loomed over her, a shadow of sweat and sour breath. Sarka remained still, her breathing even, her eyes fixed on a point just past his shoulder.
“Look at you,” he murmured, his voice a low, possessive rasp. He knelt, his knee sinking into the straw beside her. “All this time, I’ve been wondering.” His rough hand came to rest on her ankle, then began a slow, deliberate journey up her calf. The touch was revolting, but she forced herself not to react. “So smooth. Like polished stone.”
His fingers traced the defined muscle of her thigh. He was a predator admiring his kill before the feast. He reached the apex of her legs, and a cruel smile twisted his lips. “Let’s see what secrets you’re hiding down here, little ghost.”
With one hand, he gripped her thigh. With the other, he pushed, his fingers digging into her skin as he tried to force her legs apart. For a moment, she let him, her muscles yielding just enough to give him confidence. He grunted in satisfaction, his eyes glazing over with lust. He was so focused on his prize, on the sight of her bare, vulnerable sex, that he didn’t see the shift in her eyes. He didn’t feel the subtle coiling of her body, the gathering of energy like a spring being wound to its breaking point.
Just as he leaned in, his foul breath hot on her face, the wind outside shrieked, rattling the walls of the longhouse. It was the only warning she needed.
Her leg, which had been passive a second before, became a bar of iron. She snapped it shut with explosive force, trapping his hand between her thighs. Bone crunched. Joric’s eyes went wide, his mouth opening in a silent scream of shock and pain.
Before he could draw a breath to shout, she moved. It was not the lunge of a wild animal; it was the fluid, terrifyingly fast strike of a serpent. She exploded upward from the straw, her head a cannonball that smashed into his nose. Cartilage and blood erupted in a shower. He staggered back, clutching his shattered face, his trapped hand still wedged painfully between her legs.
She didn’t give him a chance to recover. She was on her feet in a heartbeat, a blur of pale skin and righteous fury. She drove the heel of her bare foot into the side of his knee with a sickening, wet pop. Joric screamed, a high, pathetic sound, as his leg bent at an angle it was never meant to. He collapsed, his ruined hand finally freeing itself as he fell.
She stood over him, not as a victim, but as an executioner. The camp was dead silent, the men staring in stunned disbelief. Joric looked up at her, his face a mask of blood and terror, blubbering for mercy.
She showed him none.
With a cold precision that was more terrifying than any passionate frenzy, she drew back her foot and kicked him squarely, brutally, in the groin. The impact was a dull, heavy thud that echoed in the silence. Joric’s eyes bulged, his body convulsing, and a final, strangled gasp escaped his lips as he curled into a fetal ball of utter agony.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the storm and Joric’s pathetic whimpering. Sarka looked at the other men, her gaze flat and deadly. They saw not a broken freak, but a goddess of vengeance, naked and terrifyingly beautiful in her fury. No one moved.
She turned, walked calmly to the gate, and tore the locking bar from its housing with a scream of tortured wood. She stepped out into the longhouse, naked and unafraid, and walked toward the door. The crowd parted for her as if she were a plague.
She pushed open the heavy hide-door and stepped out into the blizzard. The wind and snow whipped around her, a familiar, welcome embrace. She disappeared into the white, a ghost returning to her element, leaving behind a broken man and a room full of men who finally understood the true meaning of fear.
Of course. Let’s set this scene in the stark, beautiful reality of the Azurajat mountains.
The blizzard had been a cleansing fire. For two days, it had purged the world of the longhouse’s stink and Joric’s filth. Now, in its wake, the mountains of Azurajat stood revealed, silent and majestic under a pale, bruised sky. The air was thin and sharp, carrying the faint, cold hum of the Spectrocite deposits deep within the rock—a song Sarka felt in her very bones. It was the song of home.
Hunger was a relentless, gnawing beast. Her Niraxi physiology was a furnace, but the fire was running low on fuel. She moved with an economy of motion that was second nature, her senses, honed in the deep places, now scanning the stark white landscape for signs of life.
She found his snare in a small clearing, a clever knot of wire and sinew anchored to a bent sapling. A snow-white hare, its neck cleanly broken, lay still within the trap. Sarka didn’t hesitate. There was no room for sentiment. She knelt, the snow a cold shock against her bare knees, and sank her teeth into the animal’s flank. The flesh was tough, stringy, and ice-cold. The blood was a coppery shock on her tongue. She ate with a primal efficiency, her enormous black eyes constantly scanning the treeline. This was not a meal; it was fuel. It was the cold, hard calculus of survival.
She was still crouched over the kill, a feral goddess in the heart of her ancestral homeland, when she felt the eyes on her. It wasn’t a hostile stare, but a patient, observant one that held the weight of experience. She didn’t startle. She simply finished her bite, wiped her bloody mouth on the back of her hand, and slowly rose to her feet, turning to face the observer.
He stood about fifty paces away, leaning against the thick trunk of a gnarled pine. He was old, his face a roadmap of harsh winters and harder choices, the skin weathered to the texture of cured leather. A thick, grey beard obscured most of his features, and he was dressed in layers of worn leather and fur. A heavy rifle of a strange, clockwork design was cradled in his arms, not pointed at her, but held in a state of casual readiness.
He wasn’t looking at a threat or a woman. He was looking at a problem.
They stood in silence for a long moment, the only sound the whisper of wind through the pines. He took in the sight of her—the tall, powerful frame, the dark, intricate patterns of her scarification that were the only color on her otherwise monochrome body. His gaze lingered on the half-eaten rabbit at her feet, then returned to her face. There was no leering in his eyes, no fear, no superstitious awe. There was only a weary, pragmatic appraisal.
He grunted, a sound that was neither question nor greeting. He shifted his weight, and the movement drew her attention to a brace of rabbits already slung over his shoulder. He wasn’t starving. He wasn’t desperate.
He took a step forward, then stopped. He reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out a piece of dried meat, similar to the bait in the trap. He held it out in his gloved hand, not tossing it, but simply offering it. His body language was clear: I have food. You have taken food. We can trade, or we can have trouble. The choice is yours.
Sarka watched him, her muscles coiled and ready. She saw no malice in him, only the blunt honesty of a man who lived and died by his own wits. He didn’t see a demon or a freak. He saw a stranger, naked and alone in his territory, who had just stolen from one of his traps.
But she was not a thief. She was a survivor. And survivors understood the currency of value.
Ignoring the offered meat, she finished the last bite of rabbit, her movements deliberate and calm. She wiped her hands clean in the snow, then knelt by the trap. With a few practiced motions, she reset the snare, using the last scrap of the hare’s flesh as fresh bait. She tested the tension on the sapling, ensuring it was set perfectly. It was a statement, delivered without a single word: I took from you, but I have also given back. I am not a parasite. I am a partner. The trap is now working for both of us.
The old man’s eyes narrowed slightly. He saw the intelligence in the action, the understanding of the unwritten laws of the wild. He lowered the offered meat and slipped it back into his pouch. He gave a slow, single nod. It was a gesture of grudging respect, the highest form of communication between two solitary creatures.
Without another word, he turned and began walking toward a small, almost invisible path that wound deeper into the pines. He didn’t look back to see if she was following. He didn’t need to.
Sarka watched him for a moment, then gathered the now-useless carcass of the hare. She would not waste it. She followed him into the trees, a silent, pale ghost joining the solitary man in the heart of the mountains.
The path was steep and narrow, a scar on the mountainside that only someone who walked it daily would know. Sarka followed, her bare feet finding purchase on rocks and ice with an instinct that Silas noted with another inward grunt of approval. As they rounded a jagged outcrop of rock, he led her not to a grand structure, but to a scene of profound tragedy that made her stop in her tracks.
Below them, in a deep, snow-filled ravine, lay the skeletal remains of an airship. It was a V-10 Sparrow, a model she recognized from the older manuals. Its once-graceful dirigible balloon was a deflated, shredded husk of canvas, and its gondola was split open like a gourd, its contents spilled across the snow decades ago. Steam pipes were burst, propeller blades were sheared off, and the entire structure was being slowly reclaimed by the forest. It was a tomb made of metal and wood.
Silas didn’t even glance at it. He simply kept walking, leading her past the wreckage toward a low, long building that seemed to grow directly out of the mountainside itself. It was a fortress of function, its log walls reinforced with sheets of green-tinged brass plating she now recognized as salvaged from the wreck’s gondola. Its chimney puffed a steady, almost silent plume of white steam, a final, dying breath from the machine below.
He pushed open a heavy door and stepped inside, leaving her to follow. The air that washed over her was a shock—not of temperature, but of complexity. It was warm, yes, but it was a dry, mechanical warmth, thick with the scent of hot metal, ozone, and lubricating oil. It was the smell of a machine that was alive.
The cabin was a workshop, and every piece of it told a story. The light came from a lamp that burned with a clean, steady flame, fed by a series of glass tubes and a brass valve she recognized instantly. A water pump in the corner didn’t creak with a simple handle; it hissed and chuffed, driven by a small assembly of pistons and flywheels. On a workbench lay a strange device of gyroscopes and spun-glass dials, slowly turning with a faint, hypnotic whir. This was not the home of a simple trapper. This was the tomb of an airship, its heart kept beating in a dozen different machines.
Silas moved with the weary efficiency of a man who has performed this ritual a thousand times. He didn’t speak. He pointed to a wooden chair by the stove. Sit. He pointed to a basin of water and a rough cloth. Wash. He then walked to a heavy chest in the corner, pulled out a stack of worn clothes, and tossed them onto the table beside her. They were men’s clothes—a thick woolen tunic, durable leather trousers, a heavy fur-lined cloak. They were clean, and they were warm. That was all the consideration he was going to offer.
He turned his back to her, giving her the privacy he assumed she needed, and began tending to his gear, cleaning the intricate clockwork mechanism of his rifle with an oiled rag.
Sarka didn’t waste time. She washed the blood and dirt from her skin, the rough cloth scraping away the last vestiges of the longhouse. She dressed quickly, the strange, coarse fabric a new kind of armor against the world. When she was done, she stood by the chair, waiting.
Silas finished his task, placed the rifle carefully on a rack, and finally turned to face her. He met her gaze, his own eyes clear and direct. He pointed to a heavy iron pot hanging over the stove. Food. He pointed to the woodpile stacked by the door. Wood. He pointed to the water pump. Water. He pointed to a pile of blood-stained pelts on the floor. Scrape.
There were no pleasantries. There was no welcome. There were only the rules of this new world. He had given her shelter, clothes, and fire. In return, she would work. It was not kindness; it was a contract. And in the brutal economy of the Azurajat mountains, it was the fairest offer she had ever been given. She gave a single, sharp nod in return.
He grunted, the negotiation complete. He scooped a ladleful of thick, steaming stew from the pot, poured it into a wooden bowl, and slid it across the table to her. Then he served himself, and they ate in silence, the only sounds the hiss of the lamp, the chug of the water pump, and the wind howling outside the walls of his strange, mechanical sanctuary.
The days fell into a rhythm, a silent contract enforced by the mountains. Sarka’s body, already strong from a life of labor, adapted quickly. She learned the snap of the trap, the heft of an axe, the way the wind shifted before a storm. She was a model of efficiency, performing her tasks without complaint and without question. But her mind was always on the machine.
Whenever she had a spare moment, her hands would find their way to the contraptions in the cabin. She’d trace the brass fittings of the lamp, her fingers memorizing the turns of its pressure valve. She’d watch the gyroscopes of the weather device spin, her mind cross-referencing their movements with the diagrams she knew by heart. She was a mechanic starved for a machine.
The turning point came on a grey afternoon. The stove, which usually hissed with a steady, reliable flame, began to sputter. The flame grew weak, coughing out black smoke before dwindling to a pathetic orange flicker. Silas grunted in frustration, kicking the base of the stove. “Damn mix,” he muttered, his voice a low growl. “Always clogs in the cold.”
He spent the next hour tinkering with it, his movements growing more agitated. He tried adjusting the valve, clearing the exhaust pipe, and tapping the fuel lines, but the flame only weakened further. Finally, he threw his wrench down with a clatter that echoed in the small cabin. He slumped into his chair, staring at the dying fire with a look of profound defeat.
Sarka watched him, her expression unreadable. She had been watching him work on the stove for weeks, her mind quietly assembling a schematic of its design. She saw the problem not as a mystery, but as a simple equation with a missing variable.
She walked over to the stove and knelt, her movements sure and calm. Silas watched her, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Manifold,” she said, her voice raspy from disuse. She pointed to a series of pipes leading into the combustion chamber. “Primary feed valve… too narrow.”
She looked from the stove to the water pump in the corner, then back at him. “Bypass line. From auxiliary pump.” She traced a path in the air with her finger, showing him how to reroute a secondary fuel line to create a more stable flow. It was a solution born not of experience with this specific stove, but from a theoretical understanding of steam dynamics that was flawless.
Silas stared at her. He stared at the stove, then back at her. He had been fighting that stove for ten winters. In thirty seconds, she had diagnosed it and offered a solution. He saw not a naked savage or a simple worker, but a peer. He saw a mechanic.
He rose from his chair, walked to a locked cabinet, and retrieved a dusty, dark bottle. He poured two generous measures into small, metal cups and slid one across the table to her. It was the first time he had ever offered her a drink. It was an apology, an acknowledgement, and an invitation, all in one.
The next morning, he pointed to the water pump. “We need a pressure regulator,” he said, his voice devoid of its usual gruffness. “A Type-3.” He then pointed to the very pump he was indicating. “It’s in there.”
And so it began. Their new work was not in the forest, but in the heart of his machines. They dismantled the water pump, its whirring gears falling silent for the first time in years. Silas handled the deconstruction with a grim, almost reverent determination. He was cannibalizing his own comfort, his own creations, to give her the knowledge she craved.
He showed her the Type-3 regulator, explaining its function with a newfound patience. “See this?” he said, holding up the brass component. “The V-10s used these. Prone to freezing. You have to keep the lubricant thin.” He was no longer just a trapper; he was a pilot again, passing on the sacred knowledge of his old life to the one person who could truly understand it.
As they worked, he would point to a diagram in the V-10 manual she had since discovered in the wreck. “That’s the starboard engine. Same turbine assembly. The principles are identical.” He was connecting her abstract knowledge to the physical reality in their hands, bridging the gap between the smuggled texts and the humming, steaming soul of a machine.
In the quiet of the cabin, surrounded by the disassembled pieces of his life, Silas was not just teaching Sarka how to fix an airship. He was teaching her how to read its mind. And in doing so, he was finally, piece by piece, letting his own ghost go.
The shift in their dynamic was as subtle and profound as the change in the seasons. It began not with words, but with the quiet respect of one craftsman for another. Silas started explaining why he was cannibalizing his own devices, his voice a low rumble as he pointed to the parts they had salvaged.
“That pump,” he’d say, gesturing to the silent, dismantled machine in the corner, “kept my water from freezing for fifteen winters. But the regulator…” He’d hold up the brass gear they needed for the stove. “…the regulator is what’s going to teach you how a steam manifold breathes.”
He was sacrificing his past comfort to build her future. Each piece he stripped from his cabin—the gyroscopes from his weather-predictor, the intricate valve from his lamp—was a brick from the wall he had built around his own grief. In its place, a bridge was being formed between them.
The true test came late one autumn afternoon. They were working on the V-10’s primary steam turbine, a massive, complex heart of brass and iron that had been ripped from its housing in the crash. They were trying to free a seized rotor shaft, a task that required immense leverage and precision.
“Brace it,” Silas grunted, positioning a heavy iron bar. “I’m going to heat the housing and try to turn it.”
As he applied the torch, the superheated metal groaned in protest. Suddenly, the iron bar slipped from its mooring. With a sharp crack, the massive housing shifted, pinning Silas’s leg beneath it. He roared in pain, a raw, agonized sound that cut through the cold mountain air.
Sarka didn’t hesitate. There was no panic, only the cold, clear focus of a Niraxi facing a crisis. She assessed the situation in a heartbeat. The housing was too heavy for her to lift. The torch was too dangerous to use so close to his leg.
“Stop!” she commanded, her voice sharp enough to cut through his pained gasps. “Don’t move.”
She grabbed a long, sturdy pry bar and a block of wood. Working with a speed and efficiency that was breathtaking to watch, she didn’t try to lift the housing. She created a fulcrum with the block of wood and used the pry bar to shift the weight just enough to create a sliver of space. It wasn’t enough to free him, but it was enough to relieve the crushing pressure.
“Hold!” she commanded, her voice sharp enough to cut through his pained gasps. “Don’t move.”
She grabbed a long, sturdy pry bar and a block of wood. Working with a speed and efficiency that was breathtaking to watch, she didn’t try to fight the massive housing. She created a fulcrum with the block of wood and jammed the pry bar into a crevice, searching for leverage. She planted her feet, her entire body coiling like a spring. With a guttural cry that was more beast than human, she heaved.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a groan of protesting metal, the multi-ton housing shifted, lifting just enough.
“Now!” she grunted, the muscles in her back and arms standing out like steel cables under her skin. “Pull your leg out!”
Silas, his eyes wide with a mixture of agony and disbelief, dragged his crushed leg from beneath the machine just as her strength gave out and the housing slammed back into its resting place with a deafening clang.
He lay on the floor, gasping, his leg a mangled, bloody mess. Before he could even process what had happened, Sarka was kneeling beside him. With her other hand, she reached into the small medical kit they kept nearby. Her movements were sure and steady as she packed the wound with a sterile poultice and bound his leg tightly with a leather strap, her focus absolute as she worked to stem the bleeding.
Silas watched her, his pain momentarily forgotten. He had seen her mind at work in the machines, but now he had seen her spirit, her raw, impossible power. He looked from his mangled leg to the massive, immovable housing, and a new understanding dawned in his eyes. This was no woman. This was a force of nature. He looked at her, not as a worker, not as a curiosity, but with the dawning realization that she had just saved his leg, and possibly his life. He had seen her mind at work in the machines, but now he had seen her spirit in action.
From that day on, he was no longer just her host; he was her mentor. He began actively teaching her, pointing out the V-10’s design flaws, the weak points in the wing struts, the inefficiencies of the old steam mixers. He was no longer just passing on knowledge; he was entrusting her with his legacy. He saw in her the pilot he could have been, the mechanic he wished he’d been. He was grounding himself completely, dismantling the last reminders of his life in the sky, so that she could have the tools she needed to return to it.
Weeks later, Silas was able to walk again, though with a permanent, grinding limp. Sarka had become indispensable, her strength and mechanical intuition making their work on the V-10’s remains progress faster than he ever could have alone. But she was restless. He saw it in the way her eyes would drift from the engine parts in her hands to the endless sky above.
One evening, as the setting sun painted the peaks of Azurajat in hues of orange and violet, he broke their comfortable silence. He didn’t look at her, but instead stared into the low-burning fire.
“You’re ready,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “There’s nothing more I can teach you that this old wreck can’t.”
Sarka stopped cleaning the carburetor in her hands, her body still. She knew this moment was coming.
Silas finally turned to face her, his gaze direct and clear. “You can’t walk to a port town from here,” he stated, his voice devoid of its usual gruffness, replaced by a somber finality. “You’ll die of cold or a rock slide before you ever see the Steppes.”
He rose, his leg stiff, and walked over to a heavy trunk in the corner. He lifted the lid and pulled out a flat, oilskin-wrapped package. He laid it on the table between them and unfolded it. It was the V-10 Sparrow’s complete technical manual, its pages filled with schematics and diagrams, along with a heavy pouch that clinked with the sound of coins.
“There’s a trail,” he said, pointing east, down a treacherous mountain pass barely visible in the fading light. “Leads to a mining supply town called ‘Oasis.’ It’s a hole, but it’s the last stop before the Drylands. Traders go through there. Airships, too. The old cargo haulers that service the deep mines.”
He looked her in the eye, his expression a mixture of pride and profound sadness. “They won’t buy a V-10. Too old. But they’ll always buy a good mechanic. You show them that manual. You tell them you can fix their steam turbines and their busted lifts. They’ll give you a berth. Maybe not as pilot, not at first. But as crew. It’s a foot in the sky. The rest is up to you.”
Sarka looked from the map of her future on the table to the old man’s face. She saw the sacrifice in his eyes, the ghost of his own dreams given life through her. She reached out and placed her hand over his, her fingers calloused and strong. It was the first time she had ever initiated physical contact between them. It was not a gesture of passion, but of profound, unspoken gratitude.
He squeezed her hand once, a rough, gentle pressure, then let go. He pushed the manual and the coins toward her. “Go on, then. The sky’s waiting.”
She gathered the items, her movements efficient, but her heart felt a strange, heavy ache she had never known before. She walked to the door, pausing with her hand on the latch. She looked back at him, standing alone in the warm, mechanical glow of his cabin, a solitary king in a small, brass-and-wood kingdom.
“Thank you, Silas,” she said, her voice clear and steady.
He just nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
But she couldn’t leave it at that. The words felt insufficient, a drop of water in a desert of debt. She let go of the latch, turned, and crossed the space between them in three long strides. Before he could react, she wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into a hug so massive and fierce it lifted him slightly off his feet.
It was an embrace that contained everything: the fury of her escape, the gratitude for his sanctuary, the sorrow for his loss, and the fierce, unbreakable bond they had forged in silence and steam. For a moment, the old, grizzled trapper was utterly still, his rigid body unaccustomed to such contact. Then, slowly, hesitantly, he raised his arms and returned the hug, his hands patting her back awkwardly, as if unsure of how to comfort the force of nature he had helped unleash.
She held on for a few seconds longer, then released him, stepping back as if nothing had happened. Her face was a mask of composure, but her eyes were shining.
She turned, opened the door, and stepped out into the cold mountain night, disappearing without another word.
Silas stood alone in the sudden quiet of his cabin. He slowly lowered his arms, a strange, unfamiliar warmth spreading through his chest. He was alone with the silence, the ghosts, and the profound satisfaction of having finally, after all these years, sent one of his own back into the sky.