Chapter 26.5. Sarah (Patreon)

Felt like I needed to flesh out Sarah some more and give her some real development.

Sarah hit the wall wrong.

Her shoulder took the impact instead of her palms, and she spun off the wooden planks into a graceless stumble that cost her three steps. The next obstacle—a rope climb over a muddy ditch—was already in front of her, and she grabbed it without slowing, hauling herself up hand over hand while her shoulder throbbed.

Through the bond, she felt Jace's focus sharpening somewhere to her left, clean and bright like a blade being drawn. Mira's frustration pulsed behind her, sticky and hot. And beneath it all, that steady low hum that was Theo—calm, centered, unbothered by the chaos around him.

Robert was harder to read. He kept himself contained in a way that reminded her uncomfortably of herself.

She crested the rope and dropped down the other side, mud splashing up past her knees as she landed. The cold shocked through her boots and she was already running, already pushing for the low crawl under the netting.

"Hips down, Calder." The instructor's voice carried across the course without shouting. "You're not a snake yet."

She pressed her belly into the mud and dragged herself forward with her elbows, the netting scraping against her back when she rose too high. Her hair caught on something and she yanked it free, leaving strands behind. Somewhere across the course, Robert's presence in the bond flickered with something like satisfaction—he'd cleared an obstacle, done something right—and the feeling scraped against her nerves like sand in a wound.

Good for him. She thought internally, rolling her eyes.

She shoved through the netting and pushed to her feet, mud dripping from her chest and thighs.

The balance run waited ahead: a series of logs suspended between posts, each one thinner than the last. She'd watched three scouts fall off this section already today. One had broken his wrist.

Sarah stepped onto the first log and felt it wobble under her weight.

Commit, she told herself. Garrick had said it a dozen times. Your body can do more than you think. 

She walked the first log, then the second. The third was barely wider than her foot, and she could feel her weight shifting wrong, her arms pinwheeling—

Trust it. Trust your body.

She ran.

Her feet found the logs without her eyes confirming them, and she was across before she could think about falling, dropping off the far end, and rolling to absorb the impact. For one moment, something clicked—her body moving the way it was supposed to, faster than thought.

Then she hit the rope bridge and her timing went to hell.

She was supposed to cross while it swung, reading the rhythm, moving with it instead of fighting. But she grabbed the guide ropes and tried to muscle through, and the whole thing bucked under her, and she went down hard on her knee, clinging to the ropes while the bridge swayed.

"Dead." The instructor's flag snapped up. "Arrow through the spine. You stopped moving."

Sarah hauled herself up and finished the crossing anyway. The instructor didn't tell her not to.

She found a spot near the water station where she could watch the others run the course. Her knee was already swelling where she'd slammed it into the wood, and she pressed a cold rag against it while Theo and Robert approached the balance run together.

They moved differently than she did. Theo had that low center of gravity, his weight settled into his hips like he was rooted to whatever surface he stood on. He gained that perk during that goblin attack before the dungeon. The logs barely wobbled when he stepped onto them. He crossed the first three with methodical patience, never rushing, each foot placement deliberate.

Robert was looser, more instinctive. He'd told them once that he'd spent summers helping his uncle on his boat, walking on a fishing charter over the ocean. The logs didn't seem to bother him. He moved with an easy confidence that made Sarah's teeth clench—not because he was showing off, but because he wasn't. He just could.

Through the bond, she felt Theo's concentration, steady as his footsteps. And beneath it, Robert's quiet satisfaction, contained but present. He was getting better at letting things leak through, or maybe he was just more comfortable with them now.

She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Theo reached the rope bridge and paused, studying the swing pattern. Robert caught up to him, and they exchanged a few words she couldn't hear. Then Theo stepped onto the bridge and immediately started swaying with it instead of fighting, his hands light on the guide ropes, his weight shifting in a rhythm that matched the motion.

He made it across without falling.

Robert followed, and his technique was sloppier—he white-knuckled the ropes in a way that would have gotten him yelled at—but he muscled through on pure physical stubbornness, his lumberjack shoulders doing the work his balance couldn't.

"Not pretty," the instructor called, "but not dead either."

Robert dropped off the platform and jogged over to where Sarah was sitting. His face was flushed, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Theo followed a moment later, breathing hard but steady.

"Your knee okay?" Theo asked, nodding at the rag she was pressing against it.

"It'll bruise."

"The bridge got you?"

"The bridge got everyone." She didn't look at Robert, but she felt him hovering at the edge of her attention, his presence in the bond like a question she wasn't answering.

"That thing's a bastard," Robert said. He crouched down to retie his boot, giving her space without making a show of it. "I watched Mira eat it twice yesterday. She was so mad she shot the instructor a look that should've killed him."

Sarah almost smiled. Almost. "Sounds like Mira."

"She's getting better, though." Robert stood, brushing dirt from his knees. "We all are. Even if it doesn't feel like it."

There was something earnest in his voice that made her want to snap at him, and she didn't know why. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just... there. In her team, in her bond, in spaces that had belonged to just the four of them before Harold decided to add another piece to the puzzle without asking.

Theo caught her eye, and she felt a gentle pulse through the bond—not words, just warmth. Easy. He's trying.

She looked away.

"I'm going to walk the course again," she said, pushing herself up. Her knee protested, but she ignored it. "Before they close it for the day."

She didn't wait for them to respond.

Night fell heavy over the camp.

They'd set up their shelter at the edge of the training grounds, close enough to hear the instructors moving through their rounds but far enough for the illusion of privacy. Jace had rigged a tarp between two trees, and they'd arranged their bedrolls beneath it in the same configuration they always used: Theo near the entrance, Mira beside him, Jace at the back where he could slip out without being seen, and Sarah in the middle where she could reach any of them.

Robert had made his own space off to the side. Not excluded, exactly, but not fully integrated either. Sarah told herself it was his choice, but she knew that wasn't entirely true.

The fire had burned down to embers, casting just enough light to see by. Mira was already in her bedroll, eyes closed but not sleeping—Sarah could feel the restless churn of her thoughts through the bond. Theo sat with his back against a tree, cleaning his sword with a methodical focus that meant he was working through something in his head. Jace had disappeared into the darkness an hour ago, probably running his own drills or just needing space.

And Robert was carving.

Sarah watched him from the corner of her eye, pretending to study the map fragment Garrick had given her for tomorrow's exercise. He'd found a block of wood somewhere—scrap from the construction, maybe, or a branch he'd cut down himself—and he was working it with a small knife, turning it over in his hands, shaping it into something she couldn't quite make out yet.

His axe perk helped. She could see it in the way the blade moved through the wood, cleaner than it should have been, each cut precise despite the awkward angle. He wasn't using the perk actively—not the way you'd use it in combat—but it bled through anyway, making the work easier, faster. It was strange how their perks had both active and passive effects.

Shavings curled away from the block and fell into a small pile between his boots. His face was calm, focused, the firelight catching the planes of his cheeks and the set of his jaw.

He looked up and caught her watching.

Sarah looked back at her map.

Through the bond, she felt a flicker of something from him—curiosity, maybe, or uncertainty—but he kept it contained, didn't push. He went back to his carving, and she went back to pretending she hadn't been staring.

Mira's voice came soft from her bedroll. "You could just talk to him, you know."

Sarah didn't look up. "I talk to him."

"You give him orders." Mira shifted, propping herself on one elbow. In the bond, her presence pressed gently against Sarah's walls, not demanding entry, just... knocking. "That's not the same thing."

"We're in the middle of a training program. Orders are what he needs."

"Sarah."

She finally looked over. Mira's eyes were dark in the low light, patient and knowing in a way that always made Sarah feel exposed. Of all of them, Mira was the best at using the bond—at reading the currents beneath the surface, at sensing what people didn't say. It was annoying as hell.

"He's one of us now," Mira said. "You don't have to like that Harold made the choice without asking. But he's here, and he's trying, and you're making it harder than it needs to be."

"I'm not—"

"You are." Mira's voice didn't sharpen, but it didn't soften either. "You keep your walls up so tight around him that he probably thinks you hate him. And I know you don't, because I can feel what you actually think when you're not paying attention. But he can't feel that. All he gets is the wall. And he does add a valuable skill set to the team if your brother's plan works."

Sarah's jaw tightened. She wanted to argue—wanted to point out that she barely knew Robert, that trust was earned and not given, that she had every right to be cautious about someone Harold had shoved into their bond without asking—but the words stuck in her throat.

Because Mira wasn't wrong.

Through the bond, she felt Theo's attention shift toward them, a gentle current of support flowing toward Mira. Even Jace, wherever he was in the darkness, sent a pulse of agreement—subtle, almost reluctant, but present.

She was outnumbered, and they weren't even fighting her. They were just... waiting.

"I'll try," she said finally. The words came out stiffer than she meant. "I'm not promising anything, but I'll try."

Mira's presence in the bond warmed slightly. "That's all I'm asking."

Sarah looked back at the map, but the lines blurred before her. Across the fire, she could still hear the soft scrape of Robert's knife against wood—steady, patient, asking nothing of anyone.

She hated that she didn't know what he was making. She hated more that she was curious.

The watch rotation put her on second shift, and she took over from Jace just past midnight.

The camp had gone quiet. Even the instructors had stopped their rounds, leaving only the distant sound of wind in the trees and the occasional rustle of something small moving through the underbrush. Sarah settled against a tree at the edge of their shelter, her sword across her knees, and opened herself to the bond.

They were all asleep.

She could feel them—really feel them, in a way she rarely let herself during the day. Mira's dreams swirled in soft colors, fragments of memory and imagination tangled together. Theo's rest was deeper, a slow steady pulse like a heartbeat. Jace slept light and watchful, some part of him still alert even in unconsciousness.

And Robert...

His sleep was quiet. Contained, even now. But there was something beneath it—a warmth she hadn't expected, a sense of belonging that made her chest tight for reasons she didn't want to examine. He had talked about how he had a hard time when he arrived here.

They trusted her.

All of them, even Robert, had closed their eyes and let go because she was watching. Because they believed she would keep them safe.

The weight of that settled over her like a physical thing, the responsibility hitting her in a way that hadn’t before this course Harold had forced her into.

She thought about Elias, running the obstacle course that morning. The easy grin he'd flashed her when he passed. You'll figure it out, he'd said. You're stubborn enough.

His team was out there somewhere, running their own exercises, trusting their own watch rotations. She wondered who had second shift for them. She wondered if they were as tired as she was, as worn down by the endless days and sleepless nights.

Her eyes burned. She blinked hard and forced herself to focus on the treeline, scanning for movement, listening for sounds that didn't belong. The instructors were known to…test…teams while they were sleeping to make sure they were maintaining watch. And they were brutal when they found someone lacking.

The bond hummed softly around her, warm with the trust of four sleeping people.

She would not let them down.

She didn't remember closing her eyes.

One moment she was watching the trees, her hand loose on her sword, the bond a quiet presence at the edge of her awareness. The next, she was jerking awake to the sound of screaming.

No—not screaming. A whistle. Three sharp blasts cutting through the night, the signal for attack, for scatter, for run.

Sarah was on her feet before her mind caught up, sword in hand, heart slamming against her ribs. Around her, the others were moving—Theo rolling out of his bedroll with his shield already on his arm, Mira grabbing her bow, Jace materializing from somewhere with knives in both hands.

Robert was up too, his axe gleaming in the darkness, his presence in the bond sharp with sudden fear.

"What—" she started.

"Not us." Jace's voice was tight. He was looking east, toward where the other teams had set up camp. "That's Team Three."

The whistle came again, and this time it was followed by a sound Sarah knew she would never forget: a roar that shook the trees and sent birds exploding from the canopy, a sound that belonged to something massive and ancient and very, very angry.

Through the bond, she felt her team's fear spike—and beneath it, her own guilt, sudden and nauseating.

How long was I asleep?

"We hold here," she said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Garrick said the exercises are contained. If something got loose—"

Another roar. Closer this time.

Theo shifted his grip on his shield. "That doesn't sound contained."

They waited in the darkness, weapons ready, the bond stretched tight between them. Sarah's hands were shaking. She couldn't feel anything from Team Three's direction—they weren't bonded, couldn't reach her the way her own team could—but she could imagine it. The chaos, the fear, the desperate scramble to escape something they couldn't fight.

I fell asleep. I fell asleep on watch, and if that thing had come here instead—

The roaring stopped, and the silence that followed was worse.

Morning came gray and cold, and with it, the news.

Garrick gathered them in the clearing at the edge of the training grounds—not just Sarah's team, but all of them. Every scout in the program, standing in ragged rows, their faces hollow with exhaustion and fear.

Sarah stood with her team. Through the bond, she felt Mira's dread, Theo's grim resignation, Jace's carefully controlled stillness. Robert was a knot of tension beside her, his hand white-knuckled on the handle of his axe.

Garrick walked to the center of the clearing. He looked the same as always—calm, composed, his face giving nothing away.

"Last night," he said, "Team Three encountered a ridge stalker during their night exercise. For those of you unfamiliar, ridge stalkers are nocturnal ambush predators native to this region. They track prey for hours before striking, and they prefer to attack when their targets are vulnerable."

He let the silence stretch.

"Team Three had a watch rotation. Second shift was assigned to a scout named Elias."

Sarah's stomach dropped.

"Elias fell asleep on watch. The ridge stalker entered the camp undetected. By the time Elias raised the alarm, the creature was already among them."

No. No, no, no—

"Team Three's extraction plan was sound," Garrick continued, his voice flat and clinical. "Scatter pattern, rally point, noise discipline. It would have worked if they'd had adequate warning. They didn't."

He looked out over the assembled scouts, and his eyes found Sarah's for just a moment before moving on.

"A scout named Kellen failed to clear the perimeter. The ridge stalker caught him thirty feet from the treeline. He is dead."

The words hit her like a physical blow. Through the bond, she felt her team react—Mira's grief, sharp and sudden; Theo's quiet horror; Jace's walls slamming up so fast it left an absence where his presence had been.

Robert reached out through the bond, a tentative brush of support, and she shoved him away so hard he flinched.

"The exercise simulated real conditions," Garrick said. "The threat was real. The stakes were real." His eyes moved to where Elias stood, head bowed, shoulders shaking. "Kellen is dead because Elias fell asleep on watch."

Sarah couldn't breathe.

She thought about the weight of her sleeping team in the bond. The trust she'd felt. The way her eyes had burned, and the way she'd blinked hard and forced herself to focus, and the way it hadn't been enough—

She'd fallen asleep too.

She'd fallen asleep too.

If the ridge stalker had come to their camp instead of Team Three's, it would be Mira lying dead in the forest. Or Theo. Or Jace. Or Robert.

Garrick was still talking, walking them through every decision that had led to Kellen's death, but Sarah couldn't hear him anymore. Blood rushed in her ears. Her hands were shaking so badly she had to press them against her thighs to hide it.

Through the bond, Mira's presence pressed against her—concerned, questioning—and Sarah shoved her away too. She couldn't let them feel this. Couldn't let them know how close she'd come to getting them all killed.

She built her walls higher than she ever had before, and she stood there in the gray morning light, and she watched Elias fall apart, and she thought: That should be me.

Garrick dismissed them with instructions for the solo navigation exercise. Plant a flag at designated coordinates. Return by sundown. Simple.

Sarah collected her objective without speaking. Her hands were steady now—she'd forced them to be—but inside she was still shaking, still replaying the moment she'd jerked awake to the sound of screaming.

Jace found her before she left.

"Sarah." His voice was low, his presence in the bond carefully neutral. He'd lowered his walls again, but only partway. "You didn't sleep much last night."

"I'm fine."

"You're not." He fell into step beside her, matching her pace. "None of us are. But you're—" He stopped, choosing his words. "You're blocking us. Hard. Since the debrief."

"I need to focus."

"That's not why."

She didn't answer.

They walked in silence for another dozen steps. Then Jace said, quietly: "Whatever you're carrying, you don't have to carry it alone. That's the whole point of the bond."

Sarah stopped walking. She looked at him—really looked, taking in the shadows under his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the way he was watching her like he expected her to shatter.

"I know," she said. The words came out rough. "I know, Jace. I just... not right now. Okay? Not yet."

He studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded, once, and stepped back.

"Be careful out there."

"Yeah."

She turned north and started walking, and she didn't look back.

The hills swallowed her within an hour.

At first she moved mechanically, her body following the route she'd planned while her mind circled back to the debrief, to Elias's face, to the sound of Kellen's name falling into the silence like a stone into water.

The bond was a thin thread now, stretched by distance. She could still feel them if she reached—Mira's worry, Theo's steady presence, Jace's watchful attention, Robert's quiet uncertainty—but she kept her walls up, letting only the faintest trickle through. They didn't need to feel what she was feeling. They didn't need to know.

She missed a stream crossing and had to backtrack. She nearly walked into a ravine because she was looking at her feet instead of the terrain.

Get your head in this, she told herself. You'll end up like Kellen.

The thought hit her like a slap. She stopped walking and stood there in the middle of a rocky slope, breathing hard, her hands shaking.

He was dead. Kellen was dead, and she was already using him as a cautionary tale, a lesson to make herself sharper. That's what Harold would do. That's what Garrick would want her to do—take the death and turn it into survival, file away the horror and keep moving.

And she'd almost caused the same thing. One wrong turn by the ridge stalker, and it would have been her team scattered in the darkness, her watch rotation that failed, her name in Garrick's flat recitation of facts.

Mira's grief, sharp and sudden. Theo's quiet horror.

She saw it now—how they would have looked at her. Not with anger, maybe. They weren't angry at Elias, not really. But the knowing. The weight of it. The way Elias would carry Kellen's death for the rest of his life, and everyone who looked at him would remember.

Her throat burned.

She crouched down and pressed her palms against the cold stone, letting the chill seep into her skin. Breathe. Just breathe.

Through the bond, she felt Mira reaching for her—a gentle touch, a question—and for a moment she almost let her in. Almost opened the walls and showed her everything: the fear, the guilt, the desperate shameful relief that it hadn't been them.

But she couldn't.

Not yet. Not until she understood what she was feeling well enough to share it.

She stood up and looked at the next ten feet.

A ridge. Loose scree. Angle left to find better footing.

She started moving again.

The coordinates led her into a narrow canyon where the walls rose high enough to block the sun.

She checked the map fragment twice, then a third time, but the lines matched. Her objective was somewhere in this shadowed cut between the hills.

She didn't like it. The canyon floor was littered with boulders, and the walls created blind corners every thirty feet. Perfect ambush terrain. Perfect place for a ridge stalker to—

Stop. Focus. Ten feet.

She picked her way forward, moving from boulder to boulder, pausing to listen before each turn. Garrick's drills had burned the pattern into her: stop, look, listen, smell. She'd laughed when he'd first mentioned smell, but now she understood. Predators had a musk. Carrion had a sweetness. Her nose could tell her things her eyes couldn't.

The canyon smelled like stone and old water. Nothing alive.

She rounded another corner and found the marker: a small cairn of stones with a wooden stake driven into the top. This was it. She pulled the red flag from her pouch and tied it to the stake, then stepped back to confirm it was visible.

Done. Now she just had to get back before—

The wind shifted.

It came from deeper in the canyon, a cold draft that carried something else with it. Not rot, not musk, but something sharper. Mineral. Wrong.

Sarah froze.

Don't move. Don't breathe.

She heard it before she saw it: a low, grinding sound, like stone scraping against stone. Something heavy shifting its weight in the darkness ahead.

Her hand went to her sword. She didn't draw it.

The sound came again, closer. A shape detached from the shadows near the canyon wall—gray, massive, its outline barely distinguishable from the rocks around it. It moved with a slow, deliberate grace that belonged to something that had never needed to hurry.

Rock troll.

Sarah had read the reports. Garrick had drilled them on identification, on threat assessment, on the very simple math of do not engage alone. Rock trolls were ambush predators that could stand motionless for hours, indistinguishable from their surroundings, waiting for prey to wander close.

She had wandered close.

The troll's head swung toward her and she didn’t know if it had seen her. Its eyes were chips of darker stone set in a face that might have been carved by wind and time. It didn't have a mouth—not one she could see—but the grinding sound came again, and she understood it was some kind of vocalization.

Run.

Her body screamed at her to run.

But she'd read the threat assessment on the rock trolls. She knew what happened to scouts who ran from ambush predators. Their prey drive is triggered by movement. Their reaction time is faster than human legs can keep up with.

Don't move. Don't breathe.

The troll took a step forward. The ground shuddered under its weight.

Sarah's heart hammered against her ribs. Through the bond, she felt her terror starting to leak—Mira's sudden spike of concern, Theo's attention sharpening, Robert reaching toward her with clumsy alarm—

No.

She slammed her walls down so hard it felt like slamming a door on her own fingers. The bond went silent, muffled to almost nothing, and the effort of maintaining it while staying perfectly still made spots dance at the edges of her vision.

When you can't fight and you can't run, you hide. You become part of the landscape. You wait.

She dropped.

Not gracefully—she crumpled like a puppet with cut strings, going boneless against the nearest boulder, pressing herself into the shadow at its base. Her hands scrabbled in the dirt, finding mud, finding loose soil. She smeared it across her face, her neck, the pale skin of her forearms that would catch light.

Become the landscape. Become nothing.

The troll's footsteps vibrated through the stone against her cheek. It was moving closer. She could smell it now—that sharp mineral tang, like wet iron and crusite. Its shadow fell across her, cold and heavy.

Her hair. Her stupid blonde hair, matted with sweat and canyon dust but still too light, still too visible. She clawed more mud from the ground and packed it against her scalp, feeling it ooze down her neck, grit catching in her ears, filling her nose with the smell of wet earth.

Don't breathe. Don't exist.

She could feel the impact of the troll's weight through the earth.

She bit down on her tongue hard enough to taste blood. The troll's foot—if it could be called a foot—scraped past her, close enough that she could have reached out and touched the rough stone texture of its skin. It paused there, and she could hear that grinding vocalization again, feel the vibration of it in her teeth.

It was testing. Sampling the air. Looking for the warm blood and soft meat it knew was somewhere nearby.

Sarah pressed her face into the mud and prayed to nothing in particular that she smelled enough like dirt and stone to pass for neither.

Distantly, through the bond, she felt Mira pushing against her walls. Felt Theo's concern, Jace's sharp attention, Robert's alarm. They knew something was wrong. They could feel her fear even through the barriers she'd thrown up.

She couldn't let them in. Couldn't let her terror bleed through and distract them from their own exercises. If one of them panicked, started moving toward her—

Stay out, she thought, as hard as she could. Stay out, stay safe, I've got this.

She didn't know if they could hear her. She didn't know if she believed herself.

Seconds stretched. Her lungs burned. Her muscles screamed with the effort of staying perfectly, impossibly still.

The troll moved on.

Its footsteps receded down the canyon, that grinding sound fading until she couldn't tell if she was hearing it or imagining it. She stayed frozen for another minute, then another, counting heartbeats because it was the only measurement that made sense.

When she finally lifted her head, the canyon was empty.

She was alone, covered in mud, her hands shaking so badly she couldn't have drawn her sword if she'd needed to. The flag fluttered on its stake behind her, cheerful and oblivious.

Through the bond, she felt her team's relief wash over her—Mira's sharp exhale, Theo's steadying presence, Jace's walls coming down just enough to let warmth through. Even Robert, that tentative brush of support she'd shoved away before, now pressed gently against her awareness.

She let them in. Just a little. Just enough to feel the warmth of not being alone.

Then she pushed herself up from the ground and looked at her hands—caked with dirt, trembling, scraped raw from the rocks. Her hair hung in muddy ropes around her face. She could feel the grit in her eyes, between her teeth, in places she didn't want to think about.

She couldn't go back the way she'd come.

The troll had gone that direction, and even if it had moved on, she didn't trust herself to stay calm if she saw it again. So she hurried in the other way, deeper into the canyon, looking for another route.

The walls rose higher. The light faded to a gray gloom that made it hard to tell time. She moved carefully, stopping at every corner, but the canyon stayed empty. Whatever lived here besides the troll seemed to have retreated from its passage. Her mind was blank with her fear and haste, and she forgot to mark her passage.

She was lost. She knew that with a dull certainty that should have frightened her more than it did. The map fragment didn't cover this section of the canyon. Her time window was closing, and she had no idea how to get back to the training grounds.

Like Kellen, some part of her whispered. Lost in terrain you don't know, because you made choices with your gut instead of your head.

She pressed her hand against the canyon wall and closed her eyes.

Through the bond, she felt her team—distant now, stretched thin by miles, but still there. Mira's worry hummed beneath her breastbone. Theo's steadiness anchored her. Jace watched without pushing. And Robert...

Robert was carving again. She could feel it—the focus, the patience, the quiet satisfaction of making something with his hands. He didn't know she was paying attention. He probably thought she was still blocking him out.

But she felt it anyway: the way he poured himself into the work, the way it settled him. The same way exploring settled her. The same need to make something, to leave a mark on the world.

Maybe Mira was right. Maybe she'd been too hard on him.

Sarah opened her eyes and looked at the canyon around her. She'd been so focused on the guilt, the fear, the crushing weight of what she'd almost caused, that she'd forgotten the most basic thing Garrick had taught them.

When you're lost, don't panic. Observe. Adapt. Move.

The canyon narrowed, then widened again. The walls dropped away on one side, revealing a steep slope of loose scree that climbed toward what looked like a ridge. She studied it for a long moment, gauging the angle, the stability of the rock.

Trust your body.

And she started climbing.

The scree shifted under her feet with every step, threatening to send her sliding back down, but she'd learned something on the obstacle course—learned it without realizing—about how to move on unstable ground. Quick steps, light contact, momentum carrying her forward before the surface could betray her. She climbed without stopping, without thinking, her body finding its own rhythm.

When she reached the ridge, she was breathing hard, but she wasn't shaking anymore.

The view opened up around her.

She'd expected more hills, more canyons, the same gray terrain she'd been trudging through all day. Instead, she found herself looking out over a valley that shouldn't have existed.

It dropped away from the ridge in a sweep of green—actual green, impossibly vibrant against the stone and dust of the surrounding hills. A waterfall plunged from a cliff on the far side, thin and white, dissolving into mist before it reached the valley floor. Trees grew in clusters that reminded her of old Earth paintings, the kind where the artist had imagined landscapes that felt too perfect to be real.

And at the center of it all, half-hidden by the trees, she could see the bones of something ancient. Stone columns and crumbling walls. No one had been here.

She knew it with a certainty that bypassed logic. This place wasn't on any map. The canyon she'd stumbled through wasn't supposed to exist, and neither was this valley, and the ruins at its heart had been waiting—for how long? Centuries? Longer?—for someone to find them.

Sarah stood on the ridge with mud caked in her hair and blood on her tongue and her hands scraped raw from climbing, and she let the bond fall open.

Look, she thought, pushing the image toward them—toward Mira and Theo and Jace. Toward Robert. Look at this.

She felt their wonder ripple back to her, distant but real. Mira's breath catching. Theo's slow exhale. Jace's sharp, hungry curiosity. And Robert—

Robert's response was quieter than the others, but deeper somehow. A recognition. Like he understood exactly what this moment meant to her.

There is so much new world out there, she'd told Harold. Didn't you ever feel constrained back on earth? The wild places are... tamed.

But this place wasn't tamed. This place had been waiting, patient and ancient, for someone stubborn enough to get lost in the right direction.

She sank down onto the ridge, her legs suddenly unable to hold her. The valley stretched out below, asking nothing of her but to look. 

She didn't go down.

The choice surprised her even as she made it. A week ago—yesterday—she would have descended without hesitation, driven by that hunger to see and touch and know. But she sat on the ridge instead, memorizing the shape of the valley, the angle of the waterfall, the position of the ruins.

She could come back. With her team, with supplies, with time to explore properly. Not today, running from her own failures with the clock already past her deadline. Not as the person who'd gotten lost, she didnt think through her next actions.

The explorer in her screamed at the waste of it. All that wonder, right there, and she was going to leave it behind.

But you're going to come back, she told herself. And you're going to do it right.

Through the bond, she felt Mira's approval—warm and gentle, like a hand on her shoulder. Theo's steady support. Jace's quiet acknowledgment.

And Robert, that tentative presence at the edge of her awareness, sent something she hadn't expected: respect.

She didn't shove him away this time.

Sarah pushed herself up from the ridge and turned away from the valley. The sun was sinking toward the hills behind her, painting the stone in shades of orange and gold. She was going to be late. Garrick would mark her as failed, or close to it.

She found a route down from the ridge that avoided the canyon entirely—a series of switchbacks that some animal had worn into the hillside over years of passage. The footing was better here, the terrain less hostile. She moved quickly, using what her body had learned on the obstacle course, trusting the strength in her legs even when the slope tried to pitch her forward.

By the time she reached familiar ground, the sun had set and the first stars were emerging.

The camp materialized out of the darkness ahead, torches marking the perimeter. Sarah walked toward the light on legs that didn't feel like hers.

She was still a hundred yards out when she felt them—her team, their presence in the bond swelling as the distance closed. Mira's relief. Theo's quiet welcome. Jace's watchful attention shifting from alert to relaxed.

And Robert, standing at the edge of the firelight, his axe on his hip and something small clutched in his hand.

He saw her coming before the others did. His head came up, and even at this distance she could feel the way his attention sharpened in the bond—not pushing, not demanding, just... present.

Jace reached her first. He appeared from the shadows like he always did, falling into step beside her without a word. His eyes moved across her face, taking in the mud, the grit, the exhaustion.

"You're late."

"Yeah."

"Garrick's going to have opinions."

"Let him."

They walked the rest of the way in silence.

The others were waiting by the fire. Mira rose when she saw Sarah, her bow forgotten at her side. Theo stayed seated but his presence in the bond reached out, warm and steady. Robert hung back, giving her space, but she could feel him there—that quiet constancy she'd been resisting for weeks.

Mira crossed to her and stopped close, her eyes scanning Sarah's face. Through the bond, Sarah felt her friend's concern, her questions, her patience.

"Later," Sarah said, before Mira could ask. "I'll tell you everything. Just... later."

Mira nodded slowly. "Okay." She reached out and picked a twig from Sarah's mud-caked hair, her mouth twitching. "You look like you crawled through a swamp."

"Close enough," she said with a laugh.

Sarah moved past her toward the fire. She needed to sit down. She needed to eat something. She needed about twelve hours of sleep and a bath and time to process everything that had happened.

But she stopped when she reached Robert.

He looked at her, his expression carefully neutral, but she could feel the uncertainty beneath it. The question he didn't ask: Are you still angry that I'm here?

She looked at the object in his hand. In the firelight, she could finally see what he'd been carving: a small wooden bird, wings spread, head tilted as if about to take flight. The detail was remarkable—each feather distinct, the curve of the beak precise. His axe perk had let him work it finer than any ordinary knife could manage.

"That's good," she said.

Robert blinked. "What?"

"Your carving." She nodded at the bird. "It's good."

He looked down at it, then back at her. Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, or hope.

"Thanks." He hesitated. "I'm making one for each of us. This one's Mira's. I thought—I don't know. It seemed like the kind of thing she'd like."

Sarah studied him for a long moment. He was trying. He'd been trying since day one, and she'd been so wrapped up in her own resentment that she hadn't let herself see it.

"When you're done with the others," she said, "I want to see them."

She didn't wait for his response. She moved past him to the fire and sank down beside Theo, letting the warmth soak into her aching muscles.

But through the bond, she felt Robert's surprise melt into something warmer. Not quite belonging—not yet—but the beginning of it.

Later, after she'd eaten and cleaned the worst of the mud from her face, Jace found her at the edge of camp.

"You want to tell me what happened out there?"

Sarah looked at him. In the darkness, his face was hard to read, but the bond carried what his expression hid: concern, patience, a willingness to wait.

"I found something," she said. "A valley. Ruins. Something no one's ever seen before."

"And you didn't go down to explore it."

"No."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's new."

"Yeah." She looked up at the stars—different stars than the ones she'd grown up with, constellations that didn't have names yet. "I'm trying to be... different. Smarter. Less..." She trailed off.

"Less Sarah?"

She snorted. "Less stupid."

"You're not stupid." Jace shifted beside her, his shoulder brushing hers. "You're just—you want things so much that sometimes you forget to want them carefully."

Sarah let that sit for a moment. Through the bond, she felt the others settling in for the night: Mira's thoughts going soft and fuzzy, Theo's steady presence dimming toward sleep, Robert's quiet focus still circling around the carving in his hands.

"Kellen died," she said quietly. "Because Elias fell asleep on watch."

Jace didn't respond, but his attention sharpened.

"I fell asleep too." The words came out rough, scraping against her throat. "The night before. On our watch rotation. I only woke up because the ridge stalker hit Team Three instead of us. If it had come to our camp—"

"But it didn't."

"But it could have."

"Yeah." Jace was quiet for a moment. "It could have. But it didn't, and you learned something from it, and tomorrow you'll be better. That's all any of us can do."

Sarah wanted to argue—wanted to point out that better didn't bring back the dead, that learning from mistakes was cold comfort when those mistakes could have killed the people she loved—but the words stuck in her throat.

Because Jace was right, too. And so was the choice she'd made on the ridge, looking down at that hidden valley.

"I'm not okay, I hate how Harold forced us into this, and I hate being held to an expectation I didn’t ask for," she said finally. "But I think I might be."

Jace nodded like that made sense to him.

They sat in silence for a while longer, the bond humming quietly between them, and when Sarah finally went to her bedroll, she let her walls down—just a little, just enough to feel the others around her.

Mira's dreams. Theo's steady heartbeat. Jace's watchful presence. Robert's quiet focus.

She closed her eyes, and for the first time since the debrief, she didn't see Kellen's empty seat.

She saw the valley instead, green and ancient and waiting.

I'll be back, she thought and fell asleep.