Page 81 of Third

The ship dove hard, avoiding another round of cannon fire by meters. Anya’s breath caught, but she stayed sharp. “We can’t land here. Not with that artillery.”

“We will not land,” he said. “We will breach.”

“Excuseme?”

He yanked the yoke hard to the right, and the ship rolled. Her harness bit into her ribs as the worldspun.

“They have a hangar beneath the dome. One of those blasts clipped an exterior intake shaft. It is weakened. We exploitit.”

Her eyes widened. “You want to fly into a ventilationduct?”

“At speed.”

“That is insane.”

His mouth didn’t move, but the smallest flicker in the bond said he didn’t disagree. Then, dry and low, he muttered, “It is, in fact, highly irrational. Quite unlikeme.”

Anya braced both hands against the console, trying to quiet the part of her brain screaming this was a bad idea. But they didn’t have options. Not anymore.

“Do it, anyway. But if you crash us into a wall, Iswear I’m haunting your smugass.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Not even close. But the bond pulsed with something rougher than amusement. Like he wanted to laugh, if he hadn’t forgottenhow.

The ship dove, engines shrieking as gravity slammed them forward. Anya’s harness bit into her shoulders, the pressure flattening her against the seat. Her stomach dropped like a stone. The screech of metal was deafening, and for one breathless instant, she was certain the hull would tear apart aroundthem.

And suddenly, the dome was right there. Closer than it should have been, rising out of the soil like a black tooth. The intake shaft was a jagged line halfway up the structure—barely wide enough for their vessel.

“Now!” she shouted.

Tor’Vek didn’t respond. He just angled the nose and slammed the thrusters. Anya felt her spine crush into the seat as they shot forward, every surface of the ship groaning.

She couldn’t see. Could barely breathe. The shaft swallowed them like the constricting throat of a snake—dark, narrow, and ready to eat them alive.

And then they werein.

Smoke. Fire. The high whine of metal screaming.

Systems blinked offline one by one. Gravity faltered, tilting her weight sideways as the inertial dampeners failed. Asharp scent of ozone flooded the cabin, metallic and burnt, filling her lungs with each ragged breath.

And just before the blackout hit, Tor’Vek muttered, almost inaudible:

“Impact in three. Two—”

Then darkness.

SHE WOKEto silence. Not dead. Not unconscious. Just—dazed. Like her body had been unplugged and rebooted, but her mind was still buffering. Her mouth tasted like copper and smoke. Her ears rang. The silence wasn’t peace—it was aftermath, sharp and hollow, and the faint crackle of something broken somewhere nearby. She blinked against the dark, her pulse hammering in the hollow of her throat, and tried to remember how tomove.

Her harness held. The dash was black and silent. Her bracelet thrummed. She glanced down instinctively, expecting chaos—expecting the countdown to have accelerated. But to her shock, it hadn’t. It was still ticking downward, slow and steady. Unchanged.

Not paused. Not reset.

Just waiting.

Like it knew the end was coming. Like it was sure ofit.

Tor’Vek.

She twisted in her seat, heart pounding as she fought to see through the haze. Tor’Vek was slumped in his harness, head bowed, one arm limp at his side. He was breathing—shallow, uneven—but alive. Adark gash split the skin above his brow, blood running down the side of his face in a sluggish trail. For a second, she couldn’t move. The sight of him like that—brilliant, infallible, terrifying Tor’Vek—so still, so broken—struck something deep and primal. She reached for him before she could stop herself.

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