Hana turned away from her mates, her bare feet silent against the hard, red dirt as she walked toward the edge of the cliff. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Now that the Falcons had moved back, they could finally go deeper to see the crates.

The air settled—but not peacefully.

No one spoke as they moved. It was rather too awkward to say.

Hana was in the front. The wind climbed up the cliffside, tugging lightly at her hair, carrying the faint scent of dust and something... older.

Behind her, she could feel the shift in the group.

Caspian’s rage hadn’t vanished. It simmered, heavy and watchful, his eyes never leaving Kulu as if waiting for a moment to burn his feathers to a crisp.

Raiden’s silence pressed in from the other side, sharp and unreadable, but he kept his eyes on Kulu just as Caspian did.

And Kulu...

She didn’t need to turn to know he was following with his feathers dropped and a look of uncertainty in his eyes.

She sighed. The weight of what she had just done lingered in her chest, sour and unwelcome.

Three.

The number echoed in her mind like a sentence.

Three egos to manage.

Three bodies, the system expected her to accept.

Hana sighed once again, exhaling slowly through her nose, rolling the tension out of her shoulders.

"Focus," she muttered under her breath.

This wasn’t about them.

Not right now.

Up ahead, the edge of the cliff came into view—rough stones giving way to steep grounds. The wind grew stronger there, curling upward in restless spirals, as if trying to push her back.

She stepped closer and finally... she looked down.

​The side of the cliff looked like it had been cracked open by a giant. Tucked into a deep scoop in the rock was a massive steel hatch. It was a circle, ten feet wide, tilted into the mountain.

The metal wasn’t rusty; it was a dull, smooth grey that looked like it could stop a tank. On the side, there was a small glass window and a dark screen that looked like a keypad.

This... This is a bunker. Hana thought with a surprised realization. Isn’t this twenty-first-century technology? She wondered, confused and shocked. How did it get here?

The bunker was a huge building buried inside the mountain. Great metal pipes stuck out of the cliff like the ribs of an animal. Thick, black cables snaked down the rock face toward a platform hundreds of feet below.

It looked just like a military base from her old world, hidden away and forgotten by time.

​"Look over the edge," Taga, who had stepped aside during the chaos and crawled back to Hana’s side once it was time to head for what we were here for, whispered, pointing behind the ridge.

​The crates he had talked about were scattered everywhere around the locked entrance—some silver, some wooden, some wedged into the rocks, others half-buried in the red dust. On their sides of the silver crates, she could see faded black letters: PROPERTY OF AEGIS CORP.

Unlike the characters in the old dusty book, these were letters she was familiar with.

​"This..." Hana whispered, her fingers gripping the rough stone. "This is a treasure."

​Caspian stepped up behind her, his shadow falling over the steel like a heavy shroud. He looked at the metal with a deep scowl.

"It feels dead, Hana. Like a grave. Why do you want to go inside a place that has no breath?"

​"Because this ’grave’ has the tools I need to keep us alive," Hana said, her eyes scanning the dead screen of the keypad.

​She turned back to the others, her gaze sharp and calculating.

"Taga, you said you found these crates three seasons ago. Tell me—did any of you find anything else? Something that hummed or glowed near this door?"

If there was something like this here, surely there was a power source.

​Taga bobbed his head, thinking, and then he got it. "Yes, Great Female! When my brothers first found the boxes, there was one smaller than the rest. It didn’t have clothes or tools inside. It had a heartbeat of blue light. It hummed."

​"A heartbeat?" Hana repeated.

​"Yes, but the Falcons..." Taga gestured toward the caves. "When they drove us from the ridge, the Chief claimed it, calling it the ’Heart of the Sky.’ He said only those with wings should hold the light. And so, they took it into the deep caves."

Hana’s eyes drifted toward the dark cave entrances, her mind instantly shifting into high gear. A heartbeat of blue light. It wasn’t a silly heart of the sky that had to be a high-capacity power cell. I want it. Her ego hissed.

But if the Falcons had taken it into their deepest caves to ’guard’ it, they wouldn’t just hand it over even if she lowered herself to ask politely.

These were warriors who had already drawn blood today and would have no issue drawing more if she provoked them.

What a nuisance. She could stage a siege, but not knowing their number would put her in a tough spot, and... there was Kulu. He wouldn’t agree to be her mate if she suddenly started a war with his tribe just because of their heart of the sky.

Then, was her only option to beg them for it? Over my dead body. She had too much pride to drop her knees and beg them for something.

​She looked at Kulu, who was still standing in a daze of shame, and then at an Elder from the tribe who had accompanied them just to make sure she did not pull any wild stunts.

They were defensive, wounded, and suspicious. Direct demand would absolutely fail.

​Think, Hana, she told herself. They think it’s some sort of divine relic. If I tell them it’s a battery, they won’t believe me because they don’t know what a freaking battery is. But if I make them think it’s poison...

How to do that?

​"Taga," Hana called, her voice loud enough for the nearby Falcon Elders to hear. "You said the Falcons took it. In the three seasons since they’ve had it, have you noticed anything about their hunters? Their feathers? Their skin? Anything that seems unusual."

If she could make them believe, even with one coincidental situation, she would have the advantage.