The clan gathers before the sun has fully burned the mist from the canopy.
No one speaks loudly. Even the children sense the weight in the air. I stand among the warriors, shoulders squared, jaw locked, listening to the low hum of unease that moves through Omatikaya like distant thunder.
Eytukan stands at the front, broad and steady as stone. Beside him, Mo’at’s presence is quieter, but no less commanding. When the Tsahìk’s eyes are shadowed like this, something has shifted in the balance.
I tell myself it will be news of the Sky People. Another patrol lost. Another tree scarred.
It is not.
Mo’at speaks first, her voice measured and solemn. “Word has reached us from the eastern forests.”
Eastern.
My chest tightens without reason.
Eytukan’s gaze sweeps the clan before he continues. “The battle has ended.”
Battle.
The word settles heavy.
Mo’at’s voice carries the name like a wound reopening. “Ayram Alusìng.”
The forest seems to still.
I know that name.
Every warrior does.
Na’ring territory.
Trr’ong land.
My breath becomes shallow, but I do not move. I do not react. I do not allow it.
Eytukan does not soften what comes next. “Na’ring Forest is nothing but ash.”
The words strike harder than any blow.
Ash.
Mo’at closes her eyes briefly before speaking again, and when she does, it is the final cut.
“Trr’ong is lost to us.”
Silence.
“They have all fallen.”
The world fractures.
I do not feel my knees give way. I do not feel the ground beneath me until I am already there. The breath leaves my lungs in a sound I do not recognize as my own.
No.
No.
“Ma muntxatu…” The word tears out of me before pride can cage it. “Eyawne… Trr’ong…”
The name tastes like blood.
The clan is still. I feel their eyes. I do not care.
I see her as she was the last time—the set of her jaw when I stepped back from what we both knew. The way she did not argue. The way she let me choose duty. The way I told myself it was the right path. That my future was set. That she deserved certainty. That loving her would fracture the clan.
And now the clan stands.
And hers is ash.
I cannot breathe.
I chose a future that never chose me.
I threw away my muntxatu for stone promises and watched her ride back to a forest that burned without me.
The sound that leaves me is low and broken. I drive my fist into the earth as if I can force it to answer.
I should have gone.
I should have stood beside her.
I should have—
The thought does not finish.
I am already moving.
I rise without permission. Without dismissal. Without looking at Eytukan or Mo’at. If they speak, I do not hear it.
My fingers find the familiar curve of my queue as I call him. My ikran answers immediately, descending through the canopy with a cry that splits the clearing. He lands hard, wings flaring, sensing the storm in me.
I mount without ceremony.
There is no strategy. No formation. No escort.
Only direction.
Na’ring.
We launch into the sky.
The wind tears at my face, but it does not cool the fire in my chest. I fly faster than is wise, cutting through air as if I can outrun the words.
Nothing but ash.
They have all fallen.
The forest shifts beneath me as we near the eastern territory. The green thins. Smoke lingers faint and stale, long after flame has died. The scent reaches me first—burned sap, charred flesh, something metallic beneath it.
We descend.
The canopy is broken. Blackened trunks stand like ribs torn from a carcass. The ground is gray, thick with soot that rises in soft clouds when my feet hit it.
Silence.
Not the silence of night.
The silence of absence.
No birds.
No breath of wind through leaves.
Only ruin.
I walk forward slowly, as if stepping into a memory already dead. My feet crush what once was undergrowth.
War was here.
She was here.
I kneel beside a scorched marking carved into the bark of a half-burned tree—the Trr’ong sigil, split and blackened.
You should have been here.
The thought claws at my throat.
I move deeper into the clearing
Then I see it....Half-buried in ash.
Her bow.
I stop breathing.
"Eyawne."