The south maintenance yard of Grey Hollow was one of the few places in the settlement that didn't feel like it was suffocating. It sat close to the canyon wall, partially shaded throughout the day, and was bordered by half-buried frames of decommissioned crawler rigs and atmospheric skiffs that no one had flown in decades.
It was also where Vessa Norn worked most days.
She preferred it over the plaza workshops, as it was less noisy, had fewer eyes on her, and offered more quiet time to fix what no one else cared to understand.
Today, she was crouched beside a rust-locked exo-loader shell, elbow-deep in the cracked outer chassis of its core hydraulic spine. The heat was unforgiving, the wind dry and mean. She'd lost feeling in her fingers an hour ago.
Then a voice.
"Hot."
She jerked upward, banging her shoulder on the loader frame. "Void!"
Kael was standing two meters away, arms loose at his sides, a wrench in one hand that was three sizes too big for him.
He stared at her.
"Where did you come from?" Vessa asked, breath catching.
Kael pointed at the control panel she'd left open.
"Hot," he repeated.
Vessa followed his gesture. The loader's battery module indicator blinked yellow—a sign she had missed entirely.
Her eyes narrowed. "Did Mirena send you?"
Kael tilted his head.
Of course not.
Vessa stood slowly, brushing dust from her knees. "You know you're not supposed to wander."
Kael didn't move.
Vessa sighed, then gestured to the shade beside the loader. "Alright, genius. You can stay, but sit over there. Don't touch anything."
Kael obeyed without a sound.
But as she worked, she noticed it—his eyes, always watching. Not like a child. Not even like an apprentice. He watched like someone memorizing a language they already half understood.
After twenty minutes, Vessa finally cracked the faulty coolant loop. "There," she muttered.
Kael stood.
Vessa looked over. "I said, don't move."
Kael stepped forward anyway, pointed to the replacement tube she had set aside. "Wrong one."
Vessa frowned. "That's a T4-M assembly. It's standard—"
Kael reached over, took a second, dust-covered coil from the parts tray, and held it up.
"Low shift," he said. "T4-F."
She stared.
Then, with a muttered curse, checked the loader's build plate.
He was right.
*******
Later that night, Kael sat alone by the vent grate in the Virek home, a small copper coil spinning between his fingers.
He didn't know why, but the south yard was louder tonight, not with sound, but with feeling. A deep, slow pulse that only he seemed to notice. Like a heartbeat buried under miles of sand and steel.
He touched the floor with one hand.
The vibration met him. Just a tremble. But alive.
Below the stone, below the veins of scrap and ore, something stirred.
Something old.
Something that had waited longer than any child should understand.
Kael lay down, eyes half-lidded, his small fingers spread across the metal.
And for a moment, a flicker passed through him, a breath of heat, a glimmer of light behind his eyes, an image he didn't have words for:
A shape.
A cage.
A presence.
The coil dropped from his hand.