He shoved Joren away from Sarrow just as something rose from beneath the salt crust, pushing up through layers of compacted sediment and fossilized bone, a shape made of white light and shadow, vaguely humanoid but wrong in its proportions. It was too tall and too thin, with limbs that bent at impossible angles. A god-spawn, born from the resonance spike and given form by the concentration of divine remnants in the area.
It had no face, but Kael felt it looking at him and at the girl.
"Oh gods," someone whispered.
"DEFENSIVE POSITIONS!" Tessa roared.
But the god-spawn wasn't attacking. It just stood there, it's head tilted as if listening to something none of them could hear. Then, slowly, it raised one too-long arm and pointed.
South, toward the Spine, toward the heart of Tharos's corpse.
And in that moment, Kael understood with absolute certainty what was happening. The distortion hadn't been random, the girl's singing hadn't been coincidence, and this god-spawn wasn't a threat.
It was a messenger.
From inside the carriage, the girl spoke again. Her voice was steadier now, touched with something that might have been awe or might have been terror:
"It's calling us. Both of us." She stepped down from the carriage, ignoring Sarrow's shouted warning, and met Kael's eyes across the space of disturbed sand and confused soldiers. "We're supposed to go there. To the Spine. Together."
"I know," Kael said.
And he did. The resonance made it clear as language—two different frequencies that, when combined, created something greater. Something powerful enough to wake what had been sleeping.
The god-spawn faded like smoke, it's purpose fulfilled. The silence it left behind was deafening.
Lieutenant Sarrow recovered first, aetherich rod raised again. "Nobody's going anywhere except where I take them. You—" she pointed at the girl "—back in the carriage. And you—" pointing at Kael "—are under arrest for interfering with imperial business."
"Good luck with that," Joren muttered.
Tessa stepped forward, crossbow now openly aimed at Sarrow. "Lieutenant, I'm thinking you might want to reconsider. Because it seems to me that girl isn't your property anymore. She's something else entirely."
"What she is," Sarrow said coldly, "is a security risk, and so is he. I'm authorized to use lethal force if necessary."
"Then use it." The girl's voice was quiet but it carried absolute certainty. "Because I'm not going back in that box. And if you try to make me, I'll sing again and this time, I won't stop until every bone in a hundred miles lights up like a godstorm."
It wasn't a bluff. Kael could hear the resonance building in her voice already, could feel his own blood responding to it.
Sarrow must have felt it too, because her hand trembled slightly on the rod. "You'll kill yourself. Counter-resonance will—"
"I don't care."
The words hung in the desert air, simple and devastating.
For a long moment nobody moved. Then Sarrow lowered her weapon, her expression unreadable. "You're making a mistake," she said quietly. "Both of you. The empire will find you. And when they do, this mercy won't be repeated."
She turned to her riders. "Mount up. We're leaving."
"Lieutenant?" one of them protested. "Our orders—"
"Our orders were to deliver a resonant to the Spine. Not to die in the middle of nowhere fighting a caravan and a god-touched boy over someone who'll burn herself out within a week anyway." Sarrow's voice was bitter. "Let the Expanse have them. It'll be kinder than what's waiting at the end of this road."
She mounted her horse with sharp, angry movements. Her riders followed, casting uncertain glances at the girl standing in the sand.
As they rode away, Sarrow called back one last warning: "The Engine Council will hear about this. They'll send more than scouts next time."
Then they were gone, dust plumes fading into the western distance.
The girl swayed, suddenly unsteady. Kael moved without thinking, catching her arm before she fell. Up close, he could see the exhaustion in her face, the strain of holding herself together through sheer will.
"I'm Ilara," she said. "Ilara Vale."
"Kael. Kael Ardren."
"Well, Kael Ardren." She smiled weakly. "I think we just made a very bad decision."
"Probably," he agreed.
Joren appeared beside them, knife finally sheathed. "Definitely. But it's done now." He looked between them, something unreadable in his expression. "So what's the plan? Because standing here waiting for the Council to send their kill squad seems suboptimal."
Kael looked south, toward the Spine, where Tharos's corpse lay dreaming. Where something vast and patient had been waiting three thousand years for two specific resonances to finally meet.
The vessel. The singer. The key.
"We go," he said. "We go to the Spine and find out what wants us there."
"That's insane," Tessa said. She'd joined them, crossbow lowered now but still held ready. "The Spine is the empire's heart. If you go there, they'll take you apart to see what makes you tick."
"They'll do that anyway," Ilara said. "At least this way, we choose when and how."
She looked at Kael, and in her eyes he saw the same thing he felt—the certainty that this was inevitable, that they'd been moving toward this moment their entire lives, pulled by currents neither of them could see but both could feel.
"Besides," she added, voice dropping to something almost conspiratorial, "don't you want to know? What it is that's calling us? What it wants?"
He did. Gods help him, he did.
"Then we go," he said again. "Together."
Tessa sighed, the sound of someone watching people walk toward their own deaths and being powerless to stop it. "You're both idiots. You know that, right?"
"Yes," they said in unison.
"Fine. Then you're idiots with a caravan escort, because I'm not leaving you two to die in the Expanse alone." She turned to her people. "Anyone who wants to leave, now's the time! This job just got a lot more dangerous!"
Nobody moved.
"Idiots," Tessa muttered again. But there was something that might have been pride in her voice. "All of you. Complete idiots."
She spat into the salt and started giving orders—reorganize the wagons, redistribute supplies, post double watches. Within minutes, the caravan was moving again, this time with two new passengers who had just declared war on the empire without quite meaning to.
Kael helped Ilara into one of the supply wagons, making sure she had water and a place to rest. She drank gratefully, some color returning to her pale face.
"Thank you," she said. "For stopping them. You didn't have to."
"Yes I did."
"Why?"
He didn't know how to answer that. How to explain that when he'd heard her screaming, something in him had responded with absolute certainty: protect her. Not because she was useful, or because she was another resonant, but because it had felt right in a way nothing had felt right since his father died.
"Because someone should have done the same for me," he finally said. "Once. A long time ago."
Ilara studied his face, reading things he didn't want to show. "You lost someone. To the empire."
"Hasn't everyone?"
"Fair point." She leaned back against the wagon's side, closing her eyes. "I'm going to sleep now. If I start singing again, wake me up. Or stuff cloth in my mouth. Whichever seems more effective."
"I'll keep watch."
"Thank you, Kael Ardren."
Within minutes her breathing had evened out, exhaustion finally claiming her. Kael sat across from her, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, and tried to ignore the feeling that he'd just set something in motion that couldn't be stopped.
The wagon lurched into motion, wheels creaking over compacted salt. Kael watched the Ribs pass overhead, bone-white against the endless blue sky, and listened to the hum that was slowly, inevitably, pulling them all toward the heart of a dead god.
The vessel. The singer. The key.
And something else, whispered on a frequency only he could hear:
The sacrifice.
He didn't tell the others about that part. Some things were better learned later.