The riders resolved into clear shapes as they approached, nine in total, wearing the grey-and-silver of imperial scouts. But there was something wrong about the formation—three of them formed an arc around something in the center, containing it. It was a small reinforced carriage, the kind used for transporting valuable cargo or dangerous prisoners.
The imperial riders slowed as they neared the wagon circle, hands visible on reins, a gesture of non-aggression that fooled exactly no one. The leader was a woman—tall, lean, with the weathered look of someone who'd spent years in the field. She raised one hand in greeting.
"Caravan master Tessa Vrome?" Her voice carried easily across the distance.
Tessa stepped forward, crossbow lowered but ready. "That's me. Who's asking?"
"Lieutenant Sarrow, Frontier Scout Division." The woman dismounted with practiced ease. "We're escorting imperial cargo south to the Spine. We saw your dust trail and thought we'd check if you needed assistance."
"We're fine."
"Are you? We detected unusual resonance activity in this area approximately two hours ago. Significant enough to register on our instruments." Sarrow's gaze swept the wagon circle, sharp and assessing. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
"Just a minor tremor," Tessa said smoothly. "Happens sometimes out here. God-bones settling."
"Hmm." Sarrow didn't look convinced, but she nodded. "Well, if you're certain you're fine, we'll be on our way. We're on a tight schedule."
She turned to go, and Kael felt the tension in his shoulders start to ease. Then, the carriage door shook from the inside, a rhythmic thumping, like someone kicking against the reinforced walls. Sarrow's expression tightened. One of her riders moved toward the carriage, hand on his weapon.
"Is that cargo giving you trouble, Lieutenant?" Tessa asked, curiosity overtaking caution.
"Nothing we can't handle." Sarrow's voice was clipped now, her formal demeanor cracking. "Just a transport. Nothing to concern—"
The thumping stopped. In the sudden silence, Kael heard something else. Soft at first, but growing stronger with each second. It was a voice singing. His blood went cold.
The voice was clear and pure, cutting through the desert air like a perfectly honed sword through cloth. There were no words, just a melody, and the resonance in every bone fragment around them responded. The hum that had been wrong since the distortion suddenly shifted, aligning with the song like instruments tuning to the same pitch.
Kael's nose started bleeding again.
Around the wagon circle, everyone who'd worked the mines clutched their heads. Old Meris went to his knees, the Sohm sisters grabbed each other for support. Even Joren swayed, pressing a hand to his corrupted neck.
"Make her stop," Sarrow snapped at her riders. "Now!"
Two of them dismounted and moved toward the carriage, but the singing only grew louder. The melody shifted, took on a complexity—harmonics layering over the main line, creating resonance patterns that shouldn't be possible from a single human voice.
The carriage door began to glow, faint at first, then brighter, the god-bone reinforcements responding to the song, lighting up like veins of molten silver.
"She's going to breach containment!" one of the riders shouted.
Sarrow drew her weapon—not a sword, but something stranger— a rod of crystallized aetherich, set in a god-bone grip. She pressed it against the carriage door and twisted. The crystal flared in a blue-white glow, and Kael felt a spike of counter-resonance slam through his skull like a spike. The singing stopped abruptly.
In the sudden silence, someone inside the carriages screamed—wordless, agonized, the sound of someone being torn apart by competing frequencies.
Kael was moving before he thought about it, knife drawn, crossing the distance between the wagon circle and the imperial escort in seconds. "Stop! You're killing her!"
"Stand down!" Sarrow barked, swinging the aetherich rod toward him.
But Joren was faster. He'd followed Kael without hesitation, and now his blade was at Sarrow's throat, pressed just hard enough to dimple her skin without breaking it. "Drop the rod. Now."
The other imperial riders drew weapons—swords, crossbows, one with another aetherich rod. The caravan members responded in kind, a dozen weapons suddenly aimed at the members of both parties.
"Everyone calm down," Tessa called, voice tight with stress. "Nobody needs to die today."
"Your man has a blade to my throat," Sarrow said evenly. "I'd say someone might."
"Then tell your people to lower their weapons," Kael said. His knife was still in his hand, useless against eight trained soldiers, but he held it steady anyway. "And open that carriage. Let whoever's in there out."
"She's imperial property. Conscripted resonant, classified transport. This is not a negotiation."
"It is now." Joren's voice was cold, empty of its usual humor. This was the soldier he'd been, before the corruption and the desertion. "Because either you open that door, or I open your throat. Your choice."
Sarrow's jaw clenched. For a long moment nobody moved, the desert sun beating down on a tableau of drawn weapons and barely controlled violence.
Then, from inside the carriage, a voice spoke. Weak, hoarse from screaming, but unmistakably defiant:
"I'm not property."
Kael's breath caught. The voice was young—late teens, maybe early twenties. And even muffled by reinforced walls, he could hear the resonance in it. The same frequency that had called across two hundred miles of desert, that had bent reality and made the bones sing.
The vessel. The singer.
"Open the door," he said quietly. "Please."
Sarrow stared at him, calculating. Finally, she nodded to one of her riders. "Do it. But keep weapons ready."
The rider unlocked the carriage with a key hung on a chain around his neck. The door swung open, spilling late morning light into the dark interior. And there, blinking against the sudden brightness, was a girl.
She was small, maybe five-foot-four, with dark hair cropped short and eyes that burned with barely suppressed rage. Her clothes were simple—orphanage grays—but there was nothing simple about the way she held herself, straight-backed despite obvious exhaustion, chin lifted in defiance despite being surrounded by armed soldiers.
Blood trickled from her nose and ears. The aetherich rod had hurt her badly and Kael could see the tremor in her hands, the way she favored her right side where the counter-resonance had hit hardest.
But she was alive. And looking directly at him with an intensity that made him feel suddenly visible in a way he'd spent years avoiding.
"You heard me," she said. Not a question.
"I heard you."
"Then you're like me."
Before he could answer, the resonance spiked, not from the girl, from everywhere at once. The bones beneath their feet, the ribs overhead, even the air itself seemed to vibrate with sudden intensity.
Kael grabbed Joren's shoulder. "Get back. Now."
"What—"
"NOW!"