Yellow Jacket

The morning arrived soft and dry, the first in days without rain. As the Boneway tribal grounds drew near, a subtle transformation rippled through the caravan. Excitement stirred the tribesmen, grins cracked weathered faces, boots tapped with impatience, and idle chatter swelled into open laughter.

Isol, however, felt none of that ease. He crept past the cargo hauler Warren and Wren used as their cabin, eyes narrowed warily at the dented walls. Inside, it sounded like a demolition crew had gone rogue, shudders, rattles, and muffled growls echoing in bursts.

"What kind of beast are they keeping in there?" Isol whispered to anyone who'd listen, visibly pale. "It's like it's trying to tear its way out."

Calra laughed so hard she nearly stumbled. "That? That's just Wren snoring."

Deana stifled a smile. Nanuk didn't even try. He looked haunted.

"No," Isol said firmly. "No, that can't be. She's such a quiet young lady."

Deana smirked. "My lady is many things, but a quiet sleeper isn't remotely one of them."

Nanuk nodded solemnly. "First time we heard it, we thought something was attacking them. Broke into their hauler. Found Warren at the ready, pointed the tip of his lance right at us and told us she needed her beauty sleep. Said she'd been sick all morning and he was trying to let her rest."

By the time the sun climbed high, the shimmer of the distant Glass Ocean warped the air in visible waves. Heat rolled through the caravan, replacing damp with sweat. The dry glare made everything seem sharper. Less forgiving.

The shifting glimmer of the Glass Ocean wasn't just visual, it pressed into the air, warped sound and heat, made sweat bead on foreheads and tempers shorten by the minute.

Most of the expedition moved slowly in the rising heat: Warren, Deana, Cassian, Isol, Jurpat, and the rest of the troops. Their pace was deliberate, shaped by caution and fatigue. In contrast, Wren and Calra along with the twelve former warlord troopers, were unbothered by the temperature. They were born in the Wilds. This kind of heat wasn't strain. It was familiar.

The shimmer off the Glass Ocean, the dry air, the fine dust rising with every step, it reminded them of the buried ruins where they'd lived before joining Warren and the Yellow. Even then, without ever having seen the Glass Ocean, they had felt its pull. Its pressure lingered in the heat patterns, the way sound warped, the way breath seemed to carry memory. Now that they were near it, nothing felt new. It was just another morning under the same sun.

Jurpat lingered near Calra again, following her like a stray shadow. She ignored him, cutting sideways through the camp with a deliberate pace, every movement suggesting someone used to being watched, and used to not caring.

He watched her brush a lock of hair over her shoulder as she moved through the camp doing a final check. Watched the twitch of her fingers when someone from the Boneway offered her water and she declined without speaking.

Then something changed.

A voice. A whisper. A pause in the air near the weapons hold.

Jurpat froze, suddenly alert.

A low murmur filtered out from the edge of the cargo crates. He crept near a stack of barrels, posture instinctively lower, one hand resting lightly on the edge of his belt.

"...message has been sent," someone said. Male voice. Gravel under breath.

Jurpat didn't recognize it. He wasn't sure he wanted to.

He leaned in closer. Silence.

Then, movement. Something scraped against the crate wood.

He took a step back, boot too loud on the steel.

Silence snapped. Heavy. Dangerous.

Jurpat backed away. Turned.

A shadow moved in the corner of his eye, then pain. Fire, sharp and instant, like the world narrowed to heat in his throat.

He dropped.

His hands caught dirt. Blood sprayed in slow rhythm. A heartbeat's worth of survival.

The world tilted sideways. He felt his body jerk once. Someone was lifting him. Pulling.

The blur of voices broke through.

Muk-Tah's voice roared like a cracked drum. "What happened here?"

Kal-Raan answered. Cold. Dismissive. "He broke the rules. Was sneaking where he should not. I stopped him."

Wren was already there. Knees on the dirt. Hands pressed to Jurpat's neck. Her skin glowed, bright as flame and soft as moonlight. Mercy's Cry stabilizes his blood flow.
Her voice was low but certain. The light in her palm pulsed.

Jurpat gasped. Air hit his lungs like knives.

Blood Mending began stitching the wound closed.

Kal-Raan flinched back.

"No," he barked. His voice cracked with something more than anger. Panic. "He broke the rules! You are saving a traitor, you are a traitor!"

He lunged.

Wren didn't move. Her focus didn't even waver.

Warren stepped once, hand brushing the truncheon at his hip.

But Muk-Tah moved first.

The slap rang out. Hard. Final. Kal-Raan dropped.

"Enough," Muk-Tah growled. "We wait. We see what he has to say before we pass judgment."

Warren nodded once. Eyes cold. "He's earned that much trust."

Wren stayed with Jurpat as his breathing steadied, refusing to move even when others tried to step in. Her hands remained on his chest, eyes half-closed, lips pressed tight in concentration. Blood Mending required more than precision, it needed intent. Purpose. She gave it everything.

Warren kept his stance neutral, but his body was coiled. He watched Kal-Raan carefully. Not just the anger, he'd seen that in men before, but the fear. The way it shaped the corners of the Son's mouth. The way it made his next step uncertain.

Behind them, some of the Boneway tribe looked shaken. Others looked away. These were the rules the trio had agreed to.

Muk-Tah stood over Kal-Raan, not as an elder but as something heavier. Something older. The slap wasn't just discipline, it was a line drawn. A line in blood and silence.

Jurpat's mouth moved.

Wren leaned in.

His voice was a rasp, barely audible. But she heard it. A name. Maybe a warning.

She turned her head slowly toward Warren.

Warren saw the signal, but didn't react outwardly. He walked to her, crouched, and met Jurpat's eyes.

"Say it again," he said quietly.

Jurpat's lips moved, cracked and faint. One syllable. Then another.

Warren nodded once. He stood.

The others moved back. The heat had thickened again. Or maybe it just felt that way.

Wren finally pulled her hands back. Jurpat was still pale, but the bleeding had stopped. His pulse was strong.

She sat back on her heels, hands streaked with blood.

Cassian stepped in to lift Jurpat, carrying him toward the medical hauler.

Warren didn't speak until the circle cleared.

"There's a traitor," he said. "Not just a message. A plan. And someone here is part of it."

Kal-Raan tensed again.

Wren stood. Slowly.

"I don't know who yet," Warren said. "But I know what I heard. What Jurpat heard. What you almost lost us or tried to take."

Muk-Tah's face was unreadable. But he nodded.

"We find the truth," Muk-Tah said. "And then we decide who to burn."

Kal-Raan didn't speak. But his silence was no longer rooted in strength.

The tribesmen gathered tighter. Some loyal to Kal-Raan. Some not. Lines were forming.

And the heat didn't fade.

The camp had quieted in the aftermath. Tension still clung to the air like dust, but the shouting had stopped. Wren sat beside Jurpat in the medical hauler now, her hands still glowing faintly. her expression unreadable.

Kal-Raan stood alone near the edge of the clearing, arms crossed, posture stiff. Muk-Tah had not spoken to him since the slap. No one had.

Warren approached. Quietly. No threat in his steps. Just presence.

"You want to explain?" Warren asked.

Kal-Raan didn't look up. "I already did. He was sneaking. I stopped him."

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Warren didn't press. He waited.

Kal-Raan exhaled. It wasn't anger anymore. Not quite. "He wasn't the only one moving strange."

Warren tilted his head slightly.

Kal-Raan glanced toward the livestock hauler, where thick bars and reinforced mesh held in the tribe's more temperamental animals. "Ohra. Our little brother. Asked to swap watch with me. Said his stomach was off. And the moss backs were getting to him."

Warren said nothing. Just waited.

"Didn't think much of it," Kal-Raan admitted. "The kid's got nerves, but he doesn't lie. Not to me. So I let him. Switched watches. Figured he'd be ok within a few hours, come back when it was time to eat."

He shifted, face tight. "Except when I went to find him, he was gone. Not on duty not even laying down near by. Just gone."

Warren's eyes narrowed slightly.

"I thought maybe he'd wandered toward the supply lines, or gone to puke somewhere discreet. So I looked. And that's when I saw Jurpat slipping into the weapons hold."

"And you followed him."

"I followed him," Kal-Raan confirmed. "Didn't draw a blade. Just followed. Heard movement. Someone else, I think. Not Jurpat. Then I heard footsteps near the rear crates. Fast. Not his pace."

He paused. "I called out. Jurpat bolted. Tried to dodge me. We collided. I took his throat before I even thought."

Warren studied him. "You regret it?"

Kal-Raan didn't answer right away. "I regret not waiting. Not asking first. But I did what I thought I had to. I know the rules they agreed to and he broke them by being in there."

There was no heat in the words. Only tired certainty.

Warren let that hang. Then: "Do you think it was Ohra?"

Kal-Raan finally looked up. His face was cracked open in that moment, weathered, not from age but from weight. The weight of leadership, of not being the one in charge but being responsible anyway.

"I don't want to think that. But I've seen that boy watching the guards. Listening too closely. And he's been asking questions he shouldn't. About the routes. The fuel. The number of lances we carry."

Warren nodded slowly. "Ohra?"

Kal-Raan shook his head. "Jurpat."

"That'll make things harder."

"That's why I didn't speak. That's why, when I saw Jurpat, I thought maybe I'd found the truth. Thought maybe I could handle it quiet."

Warren folded his arms. "And now?"

"Now I think I made it worse."

They stood there a moment longer.

Wren approached from behind, quiet as always.

"He said something else," she said. "Jurpat. When he was stable. He didn't say a name. But he said a color."

Warren looked at her.

"Green," she said.

Kal-Raan's face didn't change, but something shifted in his posture.

"You think he meant the Green Zone?" Wren asked.

"Could've been anything," Kal-Raan said. "Or anyone."

Nanuk walked up before the silence could stretch too far. He moved with a slower kind of weight, not just physical but emotional, carrying years that didn't sit on his face but pressed into the way he held his shoulders.

"I heard," he said simply.

Kal-Raan looked over, uncertain what to expect, judgment, maybe. But Nanuk didn't offer any.

"You think it was Ohra?" Nanuk asked. Not accusing. Just tired.

Kal-Raan didn't answer right away. Warren didn't push either.

"I don't know," Kal-Raan said at last. "But if it was... I don't think he meant harm. I think he was scared. Or convinced he was doing something that mattered."

Nanuk nodded slowly. "That's what makes it worse, doesn't it? When it's someone who thought they were helping."

Wren looked at the two men, then down at her blood-smeared hands.

"We'll know soon enough," Warren said. But none of them sounded sure.

Nanuk turned. "If Ohra's involved, he's smart. Smart enough to know how not to get caught. Smart enough to use people like Jurpat."

Kal-Raan nodded. "And stupid enough to trust the wrong hands."

"We'll need to find him," Warren said.

"I know."

Warren took a step back. "You're not done yet, Kal-Raan. You're not forgiven either. But if you're right, we'll need you."

Kal-Raan straightened slightly. That mattered. More than he expected.

Wren looked between them. "If he comes back, I can try to speak with him."

"If," Kal-Raan echoed. "If."

Kal-Raan moved between the cars as they rolled forward, boots steady on the shifting floor plates, shoulders brushing past crates and curtain-partitions. It was quieter in motion. The sound of wheels grinding against the ruined terrain gave cover for his questions.

He spoke to no one directly at first. He watched. Listened. Traced Ohra's usual path through the forward compartments, where the scouts gathered, where the livestock hauler hummed under the weight of living cargo, where the supply latches were often tampered with by the curious or the reckless.

Each person he passed received a look, a nod, a small gesture. But his attention was always drifting, hunting. Watching for who avoided his eyes. Watching for signs of rearranged gear or things moved just enough to mark someone too familiar with the inside of the hauler.

Warren noticed. He didn't interfere. He stayed three compartments back, watching his own trail. The scouts, once warlord loyalists, now folded into Warren's column, kept to themselves, but friction bloomed like heat between the seams. Some moved like soldiers. Others moved like watchers.

Wren rode in the medical cab, crouched beside Jurpat on a narrow cot bolted to the floor. The space smelled of antiseptic and old steel, lit by flickering utility strips. Jurpat lay half-covered in blankets, swaying gently with each shift of the caravan's motion. She kept her voice low as she questioned him between rests, careful not to press too hard. He couldn't recall much, only fragments. The word green. A sharp, mechanical sound, short and violent, like a pressure valve letting go all at once.

Somewhere ahead, Batu's voice crackled through the local line. They'd found something beneath the tarp in the weapons section: a burnt messenger band, hidden beneath a false panel.

It hadn't been there the day before.

Kal-Raan didn't speak as he examined it, just nodded once and moved on.

He started checking the usual spots: beneath the floor brackets in the livestock hauler, the low cabinets of the meal prep wagon, even the cramped maintenance crawl beneath the rear axle housing. No sign of Ohra.

He spoke to one of the other Sons near the water barrels. The man shook his head. Hadn't seen Ohra since the shift started. Maybe he was resting?

Kal-Raan checked the sleeping berths. Empty. Cot cold.

He moved forward again. A scout claimed to have seen Ohra headed toward the front cab hours ago. Alone. That didn't make sense. Ohra hated riding near the command cars.

Kal-Raan doubled back. Nowhere.

He climbed to the storage shelf behind the engineer's quarters. Nothing.

He started asking harder.

Each denial hit with more weight. The tempo of his search changed, less calculated now, more desperate.

He gripped a scout by the shoulder a little too hard. The man stammered something about latrine shifts.

Kal-Raan didn't believe it. He moved on.

He passed the livestock again. The animals shifted uneasily. Something was wrong.

He checked every floor grate. Every wall latch. Looked for signs of entry, of passage.

Still nothing.

The dread was slow at first, like a shadow stretching with the angle of the sun. But it settled deep.

Where was he?

Ohra had vanished before, but never like this. Never without word. Never without a reason Kal-Raan could guess.

He tried the communications relay. Dead silence.

He checked the outer ledges. No handholds disturbed. No rope used. No blood. No trail.

Nothing.

Kal-Raan stood in the center car and looked down the length of the caravan, the long, winding corridor of steel and sweat and purpose.

"Ohra," he said aloud. Just once.

No answer.

Muk-Tah stood at the observation slit in the lead car, hands behind his back. He didn't look toward Kal-Raan when he passed. He didn't need to. He had led too long not to recognize the feel of splintered trust, even before it cracked wide.

The search never stopped, even as the caravan crawled forward.

Kal-Raan walked it like a man retracing his own past, looking not just for a guilty step, but for the one he might've missed.

The rift wasn't loud yet. But it was in motion. Like the caravan itself.

And Muk-Tah said nothing at all. The truth was harder: the Sons had always been a fracturous group. Loyalty lived in pockets, not in the whole. Kal-Raan and Ohra had been thick as thieves once, closer than most blood. And now, now one searched while the other stayed gone.

That silence said more than betrayal.

It spoke of dread.

It was one of the cooks who found him.

The call came through the short-range channel first, broken, panicked, clipped by static and revulsion. Warren was already halfway there by the time the second alert echoed through the hauler's alert tones.

Kal-Raan arrived first. He didn't have to ask where.

The body was folded into a secondary exhaust vent behind the third engine coil, an impossible place to fit unless someone had forced it, piece by piece. The grate had been cracked open and bent back just far enough. It wasn't blood that marked the find. It was the smell. Burnt cloth. Ozone. Old copper and something sour.

Wren got there moments later, already pulling gloves on. She didn't speak. No one did.

Kal-Raan dropped to his knees before the body was even fully uncovered. It was Ohra. Face half-charred, limbs twisted at unnatural angles from being crammed into a crawlspace built for air, not flesh.

He reached forward, hesitated, then pulled the boy free, hand by hand, arm by shoulder. He didn't cry. Didn't speak. But the way he moved, the care in every motion, said enough.

Warren stood a few paces back, silent.

Muk-Tah appeared behind them all. His eyes scanned the scene, lingering on the boy's body cradled in Kal-Raan's arms. His voice came low, not as judgment, but as grief wrapped in iron.

"It's him."

Kal-Raan pressed his forehead to Ohra's, held there for a breath, two, maybe longer. No one interrupt. The noise of the caravan continued around them, metal clanking, engine hum, but inside that moment, there was only quiet.

He had braided Ohra's first war-braid when he was made one of the Sons of Muk-Tah. Had taught him how to stand in wind. Had watched him falter, and helped him rise. And now, he was gathering what was left of him.

Wren shifted forward and began the work of examining the body. She moved gently. No sudden motions. Just the slow, practiced precision of someone who understood that even in death, care mattered.

Blunt force trauma. Likely internal bleeding. The bruises across his chest were deep. No signs of a struggle. No defensive wounds. No panic in his expression.

"He didn't fight back," she said quietly.

Warren knelt beside her. "Didn't see it coming."

Kal-Raan rose to his feet with Ohra still in his arms. He didn't shake. He didn't curse. He just looked down with a hollow stillness that screamed.

"He trusted whoever it was," he said.

The silence grew thicker. The hum of the hauler behind them sounded almost disrespectful. Like the world had kept turning out of habit, forgetting what it had just allowed.

"Someone inside the caravan did this," Warren said. "They killed him and stuffed him in there like trash."

"No," Kal-Raan murmured. "Not trash. Evidence. They didn't want him found. Hoped the exhaust would have burnt him up before anyone looked."

Wren looked at Muk-Tah, but he hadn't moved. His hands were clenched behind his back.

"We raised him," Kal-Raan said. "He knew this caravan inside and out. So did they. They didn't just kill him. They erased him."

Muk-Tah exhaled, and it sounded like something inside him cracked. He knelt down beside Kal-Raan and placed one calloused hand on Ohra's chest.

"We will carry him," he said softly. "With our hands. With our silence. Until it's time."

Cassian arrived and stopped short, the words dying in his throat. He took off his helmet, pressed it against his chest, and backed away. Others followed. Wordless. Reverent. A ripple of grief that spread without sound.

Warren's gaze swept the faces around them. Some he knew. Some he didn't. One of them had done this. One of them had lied to Ohra's face and then made sure he never spoke again.

"This wasn't a betrayal," Kal-Raan said. "This was a purge."

But even as he said it, the certainty faltered. The words sat wrong in the air. No one challenged him, but no one confirmed it either.

Because the truth was, they still didn't know.

Maybe Ohra had been innocent. Maybe he had been loyal. Maybe he'd been tricked.

Or maybe he had crossed a line he couldn't come back from.

They only knew this: he was dead now. And someone had made sure he couldn't defend himself.

Muk-Tah didn't reply. His silence wasn't permission this time.

It was mourning.

Warren stood slowly. "Lock down the caravan. No one moves cars without my word. No one shifts cargo without two witnesses. We find out who did this."

Kal-Raan stepped away, still carrying Ohra. He did not hand him over. He would not.

The hunt wouldn't be quiet anymore.

It would move like grief: slow, inevitable, and absolute.

Ohra was gone.

But whether he was a victim, or a traitor silenced by his own allies, no one could say.

Not yet.

The caravan rolled into the Boneway tribal grounds beneath a sky smeared with amber and ash. The approach wound through high, sun-baked cliffs that narrowed into a passage flanked by stone totems, old things, carved before the Collapse, each worn smooth by time and heat.

Only a few miles beyond, the shores of the Glass Ocean shimmered under moonlight. Even from here, the land held the memory of heat. The air still pulsed with it, rising off the stone in waves that bent the edges of vision. But the worst had passed. The glass waves were cooling now, the fury of day fading into the hush of night.

Word had reached the tribe ahead of them. Fires were already lit. Guardians stood at the perimeter, weapons resting but not lowered. Drums did not sound, and no dancers came to greet them. This was not a welcome. It was a reckoning.

Warren stood near the front car, coat still dusted with the remnants of the journey. Kal-Raan was beside him, silent, with Ohra's body wrapped in linen carried between four of the Sons of Muk-tah. Muk-Tah walked ahead, his pace measured, neither fast nor slow, but every step struck the ground like it remembered.

The tribe emerged as one, faces grim, some lined with paint, others bare. The elders stepped forward without ceremony. There would be no ritual until the questions were answered.

Wren dismounted near the medical cab, eyes scanning the gathering. Her hands still bore the marks of healing, dried blood under her nails. She said nothing.

Calra joined her, quietly. Behind them, Cassian barked orders to secure the camp perimeter. The expedition forces moved without hesitation, something had settled over all of them. A shadow. A purpose.

No one spoke of Ohra. Not yet.

The Boneway had seen loss before. But not like this. But at least carried home by hands that had once taught him how to hold a blade.

Warren let the silence hold as the caravan slowed to its final halt. Steel groaned. Dust swirled. The last of the sun dipped below the cliffs.

Night was coming.

And with it, truth.