Page 13 of Fated in A Time of War

ALICE

T he first breath I draw in the sanctuary tastes of dust and iron.

Cold. Dry. It settles on my tongue like ash, makes me cough softly into the crook of my elbow.

The shrine is quiet but not dead. It has a pulse—the faint flicker of the votive lamp I left burning last night.

I move to it immediately, as if by instinct.

The flame wavers low, starved. I shield it with my hand, steadying the wick, feeding it the last drops of oil from a small vial I keep hidden in my sleeve.

The gesture is automatic, muscle memory drilled into me since I was a child.

Keep the flame alive. Not because fire has power, but because someone has to tend it.

Behind me, Krall shifts in his sleep.

I freeze, breath caught. His breathing is heavy, but not even. There’s a roughness to it, a grinding sound, like each inhale fights its way through stone. His brow twitches, jaw clenching, unclenching. Even unconscious, he’s restless. Haunted.

I edge closer, kneeling beside him. His wound is sealed, more or less—the nanites have worked, the herbs I used have knitted some of the surface together. But it’s still raw, still angry. The dark stains across the bandage tell me he’s pushing himself harder than his body can manage.

I hesitate, hand hovering just above his chest plate.

He looks so different like this. Not the monster who bound me, not the soldier who dragged me through ruins.

Just a man caught in his own storm. His face is younger than I expect when it softens in sleep.

There’s a boy in him still, hidden beneath the scales and scars.

Do I wake him?

I almost do. The healer in me wants to, to soothe him out of whatever nightmares are carving his insides. But the rest of me knows better. He doesn’t need my voice dragging him back into the world right now. He needs the only peace he’s likely to get.

So I leave him.

I stand and let the sound of my bare feet guide me across the sanctuary floor, careful not to disturb him. The rubble crunches underfoot, faint echoes carrying through broken arches. I keep my steps soft, my movements deliberate.

The air is cool here, sheltered from the sun, but it carries the stale tang of long-dead incense. I can almost taste it on my tongue, sharp and bitter, like medicine gone bad.

I decide to explore.

Not recklessly—never that. I mark my path with scratches on stone, subtle enough not to scream “trail,” but enough that I can retrace my steps in a hurry.

Every exit, every crack, every tunnel—I map them in my head, weighing escape routes, ambush points, fallback positions.

Years of training layered over years of survival.

Outside, through the cracks in the ruined ceiling, the world still burns. The faint boom of artillery rolls like thunder far away. The sky above is bruised, hazy with smoke. Horus IV doesn’t know silence. It only knows the spaces between screams.

I find something half-buried near the shrine’s outer wall. A shape beneath a collapsed girder, smothered in stone dust. I kneel, brush carefully with my fingers. The grime falls away slow, revealing smooth lines, weathered curves.

A face.

I sit back on my heels. It’s a statue—an Ataxian healer, arms outstretched, robes carved in careful detail, though cracked now. The face is serene, eyes closed, lips just curved as if caught in mid-prayer. Dust streaks her cheeks like dried tears.

Something in me breaks a little at the sight.

I press my palm to the stone, brushing away more dirt until her features emerge clean. My throat tightens, and the old words spill out under my breath. A prayer. Not for me. Never for me.

“For the wounded. For the weary. For those lost in war and those still searching for peace. Keep them. Guide them. Light their path.”

I let the silence answer. The stone is cold beneath my hand, but steady. Unlike flesh, unlike hearts that falter and bleed, this figure doesn’t bend. She endures.

I glance back toward the sanctuary’s heart, where Krall lies cloaked in shadow and troubled dreams.

The words of the prayer linger on my lips, but they’re not meant for me this time.

They’re for him.

Because beneath his rage, beneath the venom he spits at my people, I’ve seen what he’s hiding. The boy who once believed in peace. The man breaking under the weight of oaths and ghosts. The soldier who still talks to his dead brother in the dark, because silence feels heavier than grief.

I bow my head to the statue, whispering the words again, softer this time. Not for salvation. Not for mercy. Just for strength. For him to carry whatever burden the universe keeps dropping on his back.

When I rise, my fingers are smudged gray with dust, my knees streaked with dirt. I wipe my hands absently against my cloak and make my way back, slow and cautious. The lamp flickers still, stubborn in its survival.

Krall hasn’t moved. His head is tilted toward the ceiling, lips drawn tight even in sleep. I crouch beside him again, close enough to hear the steady beat of his breath.

I whisper, though I know he can’t hear:

“You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

The words vanish into the ruin, swallowed by stone and silence.

But I mean them. More than I want to. More than I should.

When I slip back inside the shrine, brushing the dust of the healer’s statue from my palms, he’s awake.

Krall sits half-upright against the fractured wall, cloak draped over his shoulders, eyes locked on me like twin embers half-buried in ash. No words, no growl, no accusation—just watching. I can’t read him, and that unsettles me more than his fury ever did.

I lower myself to the floor across from him, the rubble hard against my thighs. From my pouch I pull two bars—dense, chalky rations that taste like stale dirt and chemicals, but they’re fuel. I hold one out to him.

He takes it. Doesn’t thank me. Just rips the seal with his teeth and chews in silence, jaw moving with mechanical precision.

I don’t need thanks. I need him to stay alive.

I unwrap my own bar, force a bite down. The taste clings to the roof of my mouth like dust. For a while, we eat with nothing but the crackle of the lamp between us.

“Supplies?” My voice is steady, clipped. Tactical, not personal.

He swallows, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Three fusion blocks. Half mag for the rifle. Medspray’s gone. Water pouch… quarter full.” His voice is gravel, low and cold.

I nod. “I’ve got one full mag, but it’s for a sidearm you don’t use. Some herbal stock, not much. Two more bars after this.”

His eyes flicker briefly, almost like he’s weighing whether I’m telling the truth. Then he grunts. “Enough for maybe a day. Not more.”

I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Then we move at night. Less patrols.”

His gaze sharpens. “You’ve been watching them?”

I tilt my head. “I listen. Their rhythm is sloppy. They circle every hour, give or take. North side’s weaker. Less disciplined.”

His mouth tightens—not a smile, not approval. But not dismissal either.

We trade information in short bursts, the way soldiers do when there’s no room for wasted words. Patrols. Supply caches. The tunnels below us, the risks of collapse.

But beneath the surface, something else is happening. The rhythm of it. Call and response. My words fit into the spaces between his like stones stacking into a wall. Not harmony, not yet, but cadence.

For the first time, I feel the faintest ease.

I take a breath, test the water. “We could try the comms tower again.”

His eyes snap up, hard as glass.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Too risky.” He leans forward, elbows digging into his knees. “They’ll triangulate the signal. Kru, Ataxian, maybe even Alliance scavvers. We light ourselves up, we’re done.”

I search his face. “But what if command?—”

“They won’t come.” His words cut sharp, final. He drags a hand over his jaw, the sound of scales rasping against stubble. “War doesn’t need me anymore.”

The way he says it—it isn’t anger. It’s worse. It’s hollow.

I want to answer, want to push, but I don’t. Not yet. His eyes are too raw, the weight in his voice too heavy.

So instead, I soften the angle. Shift the ground beneath him.

“What was your brother like?”

For a heartbeat, I think he hasn’t heard me. His face stays locked, a stone mask. His gaze flicks past me, to the shadows in the corner, to the cracked ceiling above. Anywhere but me.

I don’t move. I don’t repeat the question. I just sit, quiet, waiting.

His jaw clenches. “Why?”

I meet his stare. “Because I saw what you did. The way you tried to save him. The way you…” My throat tightens but I force it out. “…the way you screamed. That wasn’t duty. That was love.”

The silence between us hums like a live wire.

His hands curl into fists, knuckles pale against his dark skin. His breath comes heavier, slower.

“Lakka was… stubborn. Smiled too much for a soldier. Thought every fight was worth something. Thought we were building more than rubble.” He lets out a bitter laugh, sharp and empty. “He believed so hard it pissed me off.”

He stops, eyes narrowing like he’s realized he’s said too much.

I swallow, keeping my voice soft. “He sounds… good.”

Krall’s glare cuts through me. “He’s dead. Good doesn’t matter.”

I don’t flinch. I let the words hang.

The lamp flickers between us, shadows dancing across his scaled jaw. For the first time, I don’t see just the soldier or the beast. I see a man trying to hold together pieces too sharp to grip without bleeding.

And I wonder—not for the first time—if fate didn’t drag us together to destroy us both… but to keep us from falling apart.

At first, he goes stiff, like I’ve asked him to tear open a wound he’s sewn shut with barbed wire. His jaw flexes, eyes flick toward the ground, away from me. I think maybe he’ll snarl, maybe he’ll tell me to shut up and keep my Ataxian mouth closed.

But then he exhales. A long, ragged sound.

“Lakka,” he mutters, almost too quiet for me to catch. “He had this haircut… gods, it was ridiculous. Cropped short at the front, left long at the back. Said it was regulation length but ‘expressive.’ Looked like a half-molted bird.”

I blink, surprised, and before I can stop myself, I let out the smallest laugh.

His eyes cut to me, sharp, warning—but there’s no heat in it. Just… fragility.

He continues, slower, hesitant, like every word costs him blood. “He laughed too loud. You could hear him through the barracks walls. Always thought he was funny. Joked about the rations, the drills, the brass. Thought if you smiled through enough, it stopped mattering how bad it was.”

Krall’s hands curl, his claws scraping faintly against the broken floor. His voice drops lower.

“He believed in the regs. Followed ‘em like scripture. Drove me insane. I’d bend the rules, he’d haul me back. Said if one Vakutan cut corners, the whole line suffered. He never… never gave up on me. Even when I gave up on myself.”

The silence that follows is heavy. Not dead, not empty. Heavy with something alive. Something aching.

I keep my voice soft, steady. “He sounds like he loved you more than he loved the regs.”

Krall doesn’t answer. His throat works, his gaze locked on the far wall, but I see the muscle ticking in his jaw. He’s holding something back.

I let the quiet breathe before I speak again.

“I lost a child once.” The words scrape coming out, but I force them past the lump in my throat. “A boy, seven years old. Skin blistered from exposure, lungs drowning in his own blood. I did everything—medsprays, chants, even prayed to gods I don’t know if I believe in. He died in my arms.”

Krall’s eyes flick to me, sharp and searching. I don’t look away.

“I almost quit that night,” I whisper. “Almost walked out of the shelter and didn’t come back. But then I thought—if I quit, who’s left? Who fights for the ones nobody else sees? The ones too small, too broken, too inconvenient?”

Krall doesn’t look away.

He looks at me.

Like… something else. Something raw.

The lamp between us pops, flares for a second, shadows stretching over his scarred face. His eyes catch the light, molten and unreadable. My chest tightens under the weight of his stare.

Then movement breaks the spell—small, clumsy, accidental. We both reach for the same thermopack lying between us. My hand grazes his. Warm, calloused, scaled.

For half a heartbeat, neither of us pulls back.

His skin is rough, mine trembling. The contact is nothing, everything.

I slip my fingers away, tucking them into my lap. He grips the pack, muttering something low, guttural, almost like a curse under his breath.

Neither of us mentions it.

But the air feels different now. Denser. Charged.

I stare into the flickering flame, heartbeat uneven. He sits across from me, chewing the ration in silence, but I feel it too strongly to ignore.

A connection. Fragile. Dangerous. Growing all the same.