Page 2 of Echoes of Fire (Drakarn Mates #2)

ONE

ORLA

The walls breathed.

I pressed my palm flat against the warm stone of one of Scalvaris’s cavernous corridors, feeling the faint vibration beneath my fingertips—a rhythmic hum, like the planet itself was pulsing. The rock walls arched above me, their surfaces etched with glowing crystal inlays that spiraled in fractal patterns. My eyes traced the designs, recognizing the deliberate engineering: the veins of heat-resistant mineral branching like capillaries, channeling thermal energy away from inhabited spaces.

Brilliant. A passive cooling system.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Selene’s voice echoed slightly in the vastness around us.

I blinked, lowering my hand. “What thing?”

“The I’m-about-to-dissect-a-moonrock stare.” She adjusted the strap of the medical kit she had slung over one shoulder, her dark eyes sharp. “You forget to breathe when you’re geeking out.”

“I’m breathing.” I tapped the journal tucked under my arm, its pages already crammed with sketches of the Drakarn’s metallic-bark trees—their root systems siphoning groundwater from aquifers even deeper than this underground city. “This isn’t just architecture, Selene. It’s a biome. They’ve integrated their ecosystem into every structural choice. The heat redistribution alone?—”

“Isn’t going to matter if you collapse from dehydration.” She thrust a canteen into my hands. “Drink. I don’t want you falling to heat sickness again.”

I grimaced but obeyed, the lukewarm water bitter with electrolyte tablets. Two weeks in that cave after the crash had left all of us humans frayed, but my body still hadn’t forgiven me for sprinting through 120-degree winds during our subsequent capture.

The scar along my ribs throbbed faintly as I moved, a reminder of giant claws. It had been nearly a month since I was released from the medical caverns, but my body was still recovering.

Selene watched me swallow, her medic’s gaze dissecting every micro-expression. “You’re favoring your left side.”

“It’s a habit, not a limp. The muscle’s healed.” Mostly. I pivoted to distract her, gesturing toward a nearby archway where Drakarn artisans welded alloy into the stone. “Look at those joints—we don’t have anything like that back home. The thermal expansion coefficient must be exactly matched to the surrounding rock.” My fingers itched to take a sample.

She sighed, knowing she couldn’t win this. “Just … don’t vanish into another magma vent. Terra’ll skin me if I lose you.”

“Noted.” I smirked, scribbling a hypothesis about the crystal inlays’ refractive index. “But if I do fall into a lava tube, prioritize saving the journal. It’s got a month of soil pH readings.”

Selene rolled her eyes but lingered as I crouched to examine a fissure in the floor. Thin tendrils of steam curled upward, carrying a mineral tang that made my sinuses burn. My thumb brushed the tattoo on my wrist—a DNA helix entwined with oak leaves, inked the day I’d defended my thesis.

Adapt or die, my mother’s voice whispered in memory. Life persists where logic says it shouldn’t.

The Drakarn had taken that mantra to staggering heights. Above us, massive roots from the surface trees plunged through the cavern ceiling, their metallic sheen shimmering under bioluminescent fungi. I sketched frantically, labeling the symbiotic relationship: Fungal networks neutralize soil toxins; roots stabilize subterranean chambers. Mutualism evolved under extreme pressure.

“Orla.” Selene’s tone shifted, the playful edge replaced by steel. “You’re swaying.”

“I’m balancing. ” The lie tasted stale. My vision blurred at the edges as I straightened, the cavern tilting like a ship in a storm.

Her palm gripped my elbow to steady me. “You need rest. Actual rest, not … whatever this is.”

I pulled away gently, nodding toward a distant bridge fortress. Its obsidian spans glittered with embedded heat crystals, their prismatic light fracturing into rainbows across the river below. “I need to understand. How they’ve sustained a civilization here—it’s everything I’ve studied. Everything I …” Wanted to prove I could achieve.

Her gaze softened. “You can’t unlock the secrets to the planet in a single day. Maybe one of us could help?”

The words prickled. I adjusted my grip on the journal, its leather cover worn smooth from years of use. “I work better alone. You know that.”

A beat passed. Selene’s jaw tightened, but she nodded. “Fine. But if you’re not back by nightfall, I’m sending Kira with a tracking beacon. And she’ll bring the handcuffs.”

I saluted half-heartedly, already turning toward a shadowed tunnel where the walls pulsed with unfamiliar glyphs. “Tell her to bring the scanner on my table. I’ll want spectrographic readings.”

Her exasperated groan faded behind me as I slipped into the gloom, my boots crunching over gravel that shimmered with flecks of pyrite. The air grew cooler, drier— climate zones segmented by airflow , my mind catalogued. A low, resonant chanting vibrated through the stone, harmonizing with the distant rush of the underground river.

I paused, pressing my palm to the wall again. The vibrations sharpened, resolving into a melody that raised the hair on my neck.

Somewhere ahead, the Drakarn were singing.

My bruised ribs protested as I quickened my pace, but I ignored them. The scientists who’d laughed at my proposals for Martian biodomes hadn’t understood this thirst either—the need to see , to map the uncharted edges where theory bled into wonder.

Volcaryth’s secrets tempted every part of me, and I’d unravel them one layer at a time.

The chanting thickened like honey, each harmonic layering until the air seemed to vibrate with intent. I followed the sound through a narrowing passage, my boots scuffing against stone worn smooth by centuries of footsteps.

The fungi there glowed cobalt instead of orange, their light catching on glyphs carved into the walls—angular, urgent slashes that my translator couldn’t parse. With my subdermal translator I could understand spoken text, but I’d have to learn to read their language the old-fashioned way.

I paused to sketch them, noting how the symbols clustered near ventilation shafts. A prayer? Warning markers? My pencil hovered.

Unknown semantic function. Further study required.

A gust of superheated air rushed from an overhead shaft, carrying the acrid tang of sulfur and something sweeter—burnt amber resin, maybe. My fading purple braid stuck to the sweat-dampened collar of my shirt as I climbed a spiral ramp, each step sending dull fire through my healing ribs. Idiot. Should’ve taken Selene’s painkillers. But pharmaceuticals fogged observation, and I needed every synapse sharp.

The ramp ended at a wall about ten feet high. I didn’t see a door or any of the chanting Drakarn. At this point, a normal person would have turned away, or maybe just stood to listen.

They didn’t have my drive.

Or my climbing skills.

It was one of those things I’d done for fun back on Earth, the precision and risk focusing my mind until all that mattered was the next handhold, the next summit. And ten feet? That was nothing.

I was halfway up the wall before I wondered if this was, perhaps, not the smartest move. My side protested every stretch, and my vision was a bit hazy around the edges again. I wouldn’t say no to Selene’s canteen, but she’d taken it with her.

Maybe the wall was there for a reason.

But I was already halfway up, and the chanting was growing more intense. I just wanted a peek.

The wall ended in a broad walkway that looked out over an amphitheater full of Drakarn. My eyes had to adjust to the eerie twilight. Below me stretched terraces, concentric rings descending toward a central dais where obsidian monoliths speared upward like shattered teeth.

Dozens of Drakarn knelt between them, their winged backs rippling in unison as the chant reached its peak. My breath caught.

I crouched behind a pillar, journal open to a fresh page. The warriors’ tails flicked as they moved, their wing membranes taut with precision. Two figures emerged from the shadows—a male with onyx scales threaded with gold, a female who wore a beaded crimson headdress that trembled with each step. They circled the dais, claws scraping grooves into stone already scarred by generations.

Not combat. Too synchronized.

The female lashed her tail, the tip whistling centimeters from the male’s throat. He pivoted, wings flaring to buffet her with heated air.

The female reared back, her throat pulsing as she unleashed a roar that made my molars ache. The male responded by dragging his claws through a trough of black sand, sending up a plume that swirled into patterns. Symbols. The same glyphs from the tunnel walls.

My translator implant buzzed uselessly against my skull as the crowd’s chanting shifted in tone, their voices splintering into dissonant harmonies that prickled my skin.

A warm trickle slid from my nose. I swiped at it absently, fingers coming away smeared with crimson. Damn dry air. The blood droplet hit the stone with a soft tick.

Every Drakarn head snapped toward my hiding place.

For three excruciating heartbeats, the cavern held its breath.

Then two hundred pairs of vertical pupils contracted as one, their sulfur-yellow and orange irises fixing on my hiding place. The chanting died mid-syllable, leaving a silence so complete I heard the creak of leathery wing membranes adjusting.

The female’s wings fanned into a jagged corona, her snarl revealing twin rows of fangs. The monoliths behind her began to thrum, their surfaces bleeding veins of crimson light that pulsed in time with my rabbit-quick pulse.

Wrong. This is all wrong.

The onyx-scaled male moved first. His wings snapped open with a crack like splitting stone, the gold filaments in his membranes catching the monoliths’ hellish glow. Claws longer than hunting knives scored the rock as he ascended the terraces in liquid surges, each lunge closing twenty feet. The air around him shimmered like a living mirage.

“Wait—” My voice was strangled, drowned by the sudden dissonant hissing. A dozen warriors flanked him, tails lashing. Their collective heat hit me in a wave, parching my throat, searing my already sweat-slicked skin.

The female priestess barked a guttural command. My translator spat static, then a mangled phrase: “… profane … she defiles the sacrament …”

Think. Breathe.

My heel found empty air as I reeled back—the ledge of the wall behind me. Journal pages fluttered as I windmilled my arms, pain screaming through my ribs. The male’s talons missed my shoulder by millimeters, shredding my sleeve.

“Please!” I rasped, fingers scrabbling at a fissure in the rock. “I didn’t mean?—”

A chorus of shrieks answered. Warriors fanned out along the upper ledges, tails coiling to strike. The priestess mounted the dais, her claws raised high. In them glinted a curved blade forged from the same devilish light as the monoliths—a weapon that hurt to look at, its edge warping the air with the threat of pain.

Move. Now. Run.

I lunged for a narrow cleft in the cavern wall—too slow. A spiked tail wrapped my ankle, yanking me onto my back. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs, my vision blurring as scaled hands pinned my wrists. Hot drool splattered my cheek, the male’s sulfur-tinged breath scalding my face as he snarled words my translator finally deciphered:

“The defiler must die.”

Somewhere in the roaring dark, my mother’s voice whispered: Adapt.

I twisted my wrist, jabbing a rock sample pick hidden in my sleeve. The male howled as the tungsten spike found the soft junction between his thumb scales. His grip faltered—just enough to roll sideways as the priestess’s strike fell.

The sacred blade shattered the stone where my heart had been.

Warriors descended in a storm of claws and blades. I scrambled like a crab over the uneven stone, side screaming in agony, lungs burning with every gasp.

There.

A ventilation shaft—narrow, glowing faintly with the same cobalt fungi from the tunnels. I dove headfirst for the claustrophobic passage as another tail yanked at my heels.

“After the defiler!” The priestess’s cry chased me as I tried to scramble into darkness. “Let the magma cleanse her sacrilege!”

The shaft walls closed around me, sharp mineral edges tearing skin as I crawled toward faint distant light. Behind, the scrape of claws on stone multiplied.

They were faster.

They were everywhere.

They were hungry.

“Wait—I can explain—” My voice drowned in the ruckus.

A clawed hand locked around my bicep, talons piercing fabric and skin. I cried out, journal slipping from my grasp as the male yanked me forward. His breath seared my face, smelling of charred meat and bitter spice. The female stalked closer, her headdress clicking as she spat a word I didn’t need my translator to define.

“Execution.”