Page 159 of Claimed By the Condemned Alien

“No body,” she said. “The tracks ended at a crevice. Someone had covered the entrance from inside.”

“Alive?” Kesta asked.

“Possibly. The stone was warm.”

“Then we go back.”

“The storm has arrived,” Dreven said.

Dust struck the first armor plates like thrown gravel. Kesta stared at the fabric. “We are leaving someone.”

“We are remembering where she is.”

“That is not the same.”

“No.” His voice roughened. “It is what survival allows.”

They marched south under a sky turned black with ash. Behind them, Hallow Camp vanished. Kesta kept the bloodied fabric inside her coat. The medical printing carried a partial identification string. It was not Elara Venn’s, but the prefix matched the sealed casualty file Kesta had refused to certify.

The dead who breathed had reached Kharon-Veil before her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

What Dreven Lost

The return from Hallow Camp had already become a test of what truth cost. By the time the patrol reached the abandoned mining station, two scouts were limping, Sera’s water reserve was nearly gone, and every person carried the weight of names not yet confirmed dead. Hallow families in Ash Camp would demand answers. Dreven could give them only an empty camp, imperial sedative, and one blood trail swallowed by weather.

He had ordered the patrol to shelter before the storm closed the southern pass. No one argued, but the silence around him had the shape of accusation. Kesta recognized it because she had worn the same silence in military hospitals after commanders called preventable deaths unavoidable.

Keth organized watches. Jessa checked the reverse beacon marking the crevice. Sera examined the bloodied fabric again and confirmed what Kesta already feared: the woman who left it had been weak enough that exposure alone could kill her. Dreven stood at the broken entrance until the storm erased Hallow Camp from sight.

“You made the survivable decision,” Kesta told him.

“That is not the same as the right one.”

“No.”

His head turned slightly, surprised she had not absolved him.

“The right decision may not exist,” she continued. “But when we go back, it should be because we chose the risk with clear eyes, not because guilt forced you to prove you can save everyone.”

His expression closed.

“Do not use my own lesson against me,” he said.

“I learned it from watching you fail to follow it.”

He walked deeper into the station.

Hours later, when the others slept, Kesta found him beside the narrow observation slit. The abandoned station had settled into an uneasy night. Its single intact room had three walls and a roof that complained whenever the wind shifted. Keth posted guards at the broken entrances while Sera slept beside the supply packs and the others arranged themselves against the stone, conserving heat. Kesta could not sleep.

The strip of bloodied fabric lay folded in her palm. She had scanned it until the device battery dropped below twenty percent. Human blood. Female. Malnourished. Traces of the same suppressant found at Hallow Camp. Someone had escaped extraction. Someone might still be alive in the rocks while Kesta sat beneath shelter.

“You would have died before reaching the crevice.”

Dreven’s voice came from the darkness behind her. Kesta did not turn. “I know.”

“You are angry because knowing changes nothing.”