Chapter 175: New Follower?
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By hour eight, the silence between them had softened, not into comfort, but into a mutual understanding. The kind of quiet that didn’t need permission. The kind of silence where survival recognized survival.
Azhara walked five paces behind Kai. No closer. No further. She matched his rhythm with the obedience of a shadow, never once stepping on deep water she had yet to test. She watched the direction of his eyes and adjusted her path accordingly. If he stopped, she stopped. If he veered, she veered.
She didn’t ask questions. Not because she had none, but because she knew now wasn’t the time.
When he bent to collect a larger meteoroid chunk, she circled to the side and swept up the smaller, broken flakes he left behind. Shards that might have sliced open someone untrained. But she brought them without pause, blood dripping from her palms from razor fragments. It bit through her fur and skin.
When his breathing grew sharp from exhaustion, she didn’t speak. She just placed a moss wrapped water pouch at his feet. It was soft and slightly damp. It had been soaked hours ago near a sulfur spring. She had kept it wrapped and shaded beneath her armpit to preserve its coolness.
She had nothing to prove. But she proved everything.
Kai’s eyes followed her this time, not just in combat calculation, but in measured curiosity. He watched as she hunched to carry a larger chunk of star Meteoroid iron, at least twenty kilos, dragging it across sharp terrain by rope, pulling with both hands. Her shoulders shook. Her thighs strained. And her palms were raw, torn, embedded with glittering glass. It left bloody handprints on the stone. Probably she picked it up from half buried ground.
But she didn’t flinch. She didn’t complain. She just endured the pain.
Finally, after she placed the second large fragment beside the others, Kai stood and spoke.
"...Luna could use someone like you."