The canyon narrowed until the walls felt close enough to touch on both sides. The air was colder here, stale, like it had been trapped for years and only now remembered how to move. Every footstep echoed twice: once from the ground, once from the stone overhead.
Lira walked point, silent and economical.
Kael limped behind her, breathing through his teeth.
Xeno walked last, shovel across his shoulders like a yoke.
He had not spoken since the scroll was taken.
I could feel the anger coming off him the way heat rises from sun-baked rock: invisible but unmistakable. His stride was the same length, the same rhythm, but the silence around him had teeth. When a pebble skittered under my foot he didn't turn, yet I saw the muscles in his jaw jump. When Kael coughed, Xeno's fingers flexed once on the shovel handle, hard enough that the wood creaked. He never complained, never slowed, never let the irritation out of its cage. He just carried it, the way he carried everything else.
I tried to keep up. I really did.
But my legs had turned to water hours ago, and the water had since evaporated. Each step sent a spike of pain through my soles, up my shins, into my hips. My stomach wasn't growling anymore; it had moved past complaints and into something quieter and more dangerous: a hollow, grinding ache that made my vision pulse at the edges.
I focused on Xeno's back. If I stared at the place where his hair brushed the collar of his filthy jacket, the world stayed in one piece. If I looked anywhere else, the canyon walls wobbled like wet paint.
Click… click… click…
The sound drifted down from somewhere high above, soft, patient, curious. Lira's head tilted a fraction, listening. Xeno's shoulders squared. Nobody said the obvious: the hunters were still following, waiting for one of us to drop.
I dropped first.
It wasn't dramatic. My left knee simply folded, like someone had snipped the string. The stone rushed up and kissed my palms. Gravel bit skin. The impact jarred my teeth.
For a second everything went white and soundless.
When colour came back, Xeno was already crouched in front of me. He didn't touch me this time; he hovered, close enough that I could smell the faint tremor in his outstretched hand before he forced it still.
"Yona." His voice was low, controlled, but the annoyance was there, thin and sharp as broken glass. "Get up."
"I'm trying," I whispered. The words scraped out like dry leaves.
Kael limped over, breathing hard. "She's starving, Xeno. We all are. You can't march a six-year-old on fumes forever."
Xeno didn't look at him. His blindfolded face stayed fixed on me, and I swear the blackness of the cloth looked darker than the canyon sky.
"She's walked farther than this before," he said.
"Not after a mind-break and a seizure and no food for three days," Kael snapped. "Her body is eating itself. Look at her."
I didn't want to be looked at. I wanted to disappear into the stone. My arms shook trying to push me upright. The world tilted again, slower this time, like a ship listing.
Lira turned. For once her expression wasn't perfectly neutral; there was a flicker of calculation, then decision.
"Two hundred meters ahead the tunnel forks," she said. "Left branch leads to the old maintenance conduit. There's an emergency ration locker. Sealed. Probably still intact."
Xeno's head snapped toward her so fast I heard the vertebrae click. "You knew this whole time and didn't—"
"I knew if I mentioned food before we lost the scroll, you three would have fixated on your stomachs instead of the mission." Her voice was winter air. "Priorities."
Xeno's lips parted, closed. The anger flared brighter, but he locked it down again. I could almost hear the cage rattle.
He bent, slid one arm behind my back, the other under my knees, and lifted me like I weighed nothing. The sudden motion made my stomach lurch; bile burned the back of my throat.
"Put me down," I mumbled, mortified. "I can walk."
"You can't," he said. Not cruel. Just fact.
His heartbeat against my shoulder was fast, too fast for someone who looked so calm. I hated that I noticed. I hated that it comforted me anyway.
Kael started to protest, but Lira was already moving. We followed because there was nothing else to do.
The tunnel mouth yawned ahead, a perfect black circle cut into the canyon wall centuries ago. Pre-fall metal grating lay twisted to one side like shed skin. Lira stepped through without hesitation. The rest of us followed into darkness that smelled of rust and wet stone.
Emergency strips along the floor still held a ghost of phosphor, enough to see shapes. Pipes ran overhead like veins. Every few metres a sign dangled by one screw: MAINTENANCE LEVEL 7 – AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY. The letters glowed faintly, sickly green.
My head lolled against Xeno's collarbone. I was cold and burning at the same time.
"How much farther?" Kael asked. His voice echoed strangely.
"Fifty metres," Lira said.
Xeno's arms tightened around me, almost imperceptibly.
We rounded a corner and the corridor opened into a small chamber. A dented grey locker stood against the far wall, knee-high, military stencil still legible: EMERGENCY RATIONS – 72 HOUR.
Lira knelt, produced a flat tool from her sleeve, and had the lock open in four silent seconds. The door squealed. Inside: vacuum-sealed silver packets stacked like bricks.
She pulled one out, tore it with her teeth, and handed it to Kael first. He didn't argue; he ripped it open and started eating something that looked like compressed sawdust and smelled faintly of chicken. He groaned like a dying man given water.
Lira tore a second packet, smaller, child-sized, and held it out toward Xeno.
He didn't take it.
"She eats first," he said.
Lira's eyebrow arched. "You're swaying on your feet."
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
I felt the argument brewing like thunder. My tongue felt thick, useless. I managed to lift one hand and tug weakly at Xeno's sleeve.
"Please," I croaked. "Eat."
His head turned down toward me. For a long second he didn't move. Then he shifted me in his arms so I was propped against his chest like a baby, took the packet from Lira, and tore it open with his teeth.
The smell hit me: sweet, salty, fake-but-real calories. My stomach cramped so hard I whimpered.
Xeno pinched a corner of the bar between two fingers and held it to my lips.
"Small bites."
I tried. The first piece stuck to the roof of my mouth. I chewed slowly, tears starting again because it tasted like hope and I didn't trust hope anymore. Xeno waited, patient, feeding me the way you feed a wounded bird, piece by piece, until half the bar was gone and the cramping eased into a dull roar.
Only then did he eat the rest in three efficient bites.
Kael had already started on his second packet. Lira ate standing up, eyes on the corridor we'd come from, chewing mechanically.
I sagged against Xeno's chest, warmer now, heavier. The world still swayed, but it wasn't trying to throw me off anymore.
"I'm sorry," I whispered into his jacket.
"For what?"
"For… collapsing. For slowing everyone down."
His exhale stirred my hair. "You didn't slow us down. Hunger did. And hunger is patient. It wins if you ignore it."
He sounded like he was quoting someone. Maybe himself, years ago, when he'd been small and starving too.
Lira capped her water bottle, every motion crisp. "We rest here twenty minutes. Hydrate. Then we move. The Harvester has a six-hour lead, but these tunnels are a grid. We cut it off at the junction."
Xeno's arms didn't loosen around me. "She's not walking yet."
"She will be," Lira said. Not a challenge. A fact.
Kael leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed. "Give the kid thirty, Lira. Thirty minutes won't kill the mission."
Lira looked like she wanted to argue, then didn't. She simply sat, back straight, gun across her knees, and closed her eyes, not sleeping, just… waiting.
Xeno eased down until he was sitting on the cold floor, me still cradled in his lap. The shovel lay beside him like a loyal dog. He didn't let go.
I could hear his heartbeat now, steady again. I could feel the annoyance still there, coiled under his ribs, but it wasn't pointed at me anymore. It was pointed at the world that let children starve while monsters stole scrolls.
Minutes passed measured in heartbeats and the soft drip of water somewhere far away.
I dozed, or maybe passed out; the difference felt thin. When I opened my eyes again, Xeno was watching the corridor, blindfold in place, but his head angled like he could see everything anyway.
"You're angry," I said, voice small.
Aout the scroll?"
A long pause.
"I'm angry," he said finally, "that I let it be taken."
His fingers tightened on my arm, then relaxed, like he was reminding himself I was fragile.
"I thought I could protect it," he went on, so quietly I almost missed it. "I was wrong."
The admission hung between us, heavier than the shovel, heavier than hunger.
Lira's eyes opened. "Twenty-eight minutes," she said. "We move."
Xeno lifted me to my feet. My legs wobbled but held. The ration bar had done its job; the world was sharp again, edges painful but real.
Kael groaned as he stood, but there was colour in his face now.
I looked at Xeno. His face was calm again, closed, but I could still feel the anger banked inside him like coals.
I reached out and took his hand.
He let me.
Together, we followed Lira into the dark.
Behind us, the emergency locker hung open, empty packets fluttering like dead leaves.
Ahead, the clicking had stopped being distant.
It was patient.
It was close.
And it knew exactly where we were.