CHAPTER 93: SMOKEBRUSH CORRIDOR

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His stomach growled—but this time, it wasn’t painful. It was a memory. Hunger remembered, not hunger active.

He looked toward the camp, still empty.

A quiet huff escaped his throat.

Then, without panic or noise, he walked toward the edge of the basin and sat—tail curled neatly around his feet, head raised to the sky.

He exhaled a single stream of flame, short and controlled, carving a clean spiral into the air.

Then waited.

Miles away, Zephyr paused. He felt... something. A ripple through his bond. Like a whisper of warmth tickling his collarbone.

He turned, narrowing his eyes toward the crater far behind them.

Fenna noticed. "What?"

"...Nothing. Just... he’s awake."

Fenna smiled faintly. "Should we call him? Tell Star to come over?"

"I already gave him the command," Zephyr repeated, "When he feels my call, he’ll find us. Just keep an ear open for wingbeats."

She raised a brow. "Think he’ll listen?"

Zephyr exhaled with quiet certainty. "He will. He’s Star."

A pause.

Then his gaze drifted upward toward the morning sky, streaked with deep blue and rivers of gold stretching across the treetops.

"We’ll feed him," Zephyr murmured. "And then see what this new Star is really capable of."

Fenna tightened her bracer straps, pulled her black hair into a quick braid, and scanned the ridgeline. "Let’s go bag some food."

They stepped into the trees.

Emberwood forest never smelled the same for two mornings in a row. Today, the forest exhaled the scent of charfruit pollen and wet basalt, weaving a mineral sweetness over the sulfurous undertones rising from smoldering rootbeds. The air shimmered faintly with trapped heat, and fine ash flakes drifted like lazy snow, ghosting between the tall, scorched trunks. They stuck to Fenna’s hood and Zephyr’s gloves, melting into gray smudges on already soot-slick fabric.

The trees here were jagged skeletons like charred black, hollowed by time and fire, with only the toughest lichen and ironbark moss clinging to their flanks. Ferns grew like ghosts in the cracks, pale and fragile, and even they bore burn scars from the forest’s last tantrum.

Fenna led with her bow half-drawn, arrowhead tilted low. Her boots whispered across the ash floor, steps calculated to avoid dry branches or scattered obsidian flakes that might snap underfoot. Zephyr followed a pace behind, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his hatchet, eyes scanning with quiet intensity. Every shadow might hide prey.or something worse.

Muse clomped softly behind them, the cart wheels squeaking faintly with each rotation. (You might ask why bring her and the cart? The reason is... bring back the game, the beasts they will hunt.)

A rusted old bell hanging from the yoke thunked gently against the side rail, muffled but steady. It had been Zephyr’s idea to keep it; Fenna had threatened to throw it into a sulfur pit on multiple occasions. Today, though, even she tolerated the rhythmic sound—maybe because it gave them something to focus on other than the eerie silence between bird calls and time to time volcanic bursts.

Aurora flitted ahead, darting from branch to branch like a flame-colored blur. The phoenix chick clicked and chirped softly. Her eyes glowing amber in the shadows. Her small wings caught every flicker of sunlight that broke through the canopy gaps, scattering sparks in her wake like falling stars.

Ten minutes into their cautious advance, Zephyr suddenly crouched. His boot slid back smoothly, and he knelt beside a half melted fern into the dirt. The edges of its fronds were blackened, curling like old parchment.

"Here," he whispered.

Fenna immediately froze, her bow tightening, then turned and approached soundlessly. Zephyr tapped the muddy depression beside the stalk.

A hoofprint—oval and cleft, bigger than his palm, edges still steaming faintly where the heat of the creature’s body had scorched into the soot. The track was deep, layered with cracked mud and sulfur grit.

"Ember-tusk boar," Zephyr murmured, studying the shape. "Rank E, if it’s juvenile. Could weigh three hundred kilos... good meat, small core."

"Three hundred?" Fenna whispered, kneeling beside him. She slid her finger tips through the center of the print. "Feels dense. The center’s compressed but the edges are light—heavy up front. That’s a charging weight."

Zephyr nodded, brushing away some ash to reveal a second, partial track beside it. "Looks like a solo trail. No other prints."

Fenna glanced toward the direction the boar had gone, her black hair catching the faint light like polished steel. "Track’s less than two hours old. Heading east-north. And..."

She paused, lifting her thumb and raising it to feel the air. "Wind’s in our favor."

A thin breeze funneled gently down the corridor, rustling the overhead ash fronds. It smelled faintly of singed pepper leaves and broken sapwood. More importantly, it carried the scent of the hunters away from their prey.

"Perfect," Zephyr said. "If we do this cleanly, it won’t know we’re within twenty meters."

"We’ll need bait," Fenna muttered. She slung her satchel forward and withdrew a small glass jar. The charfruit paste inside shimmered a deep gold-orange—sticky, syrup-thick, and violently pungent. The lid hissed faintly when opened.

"Ripe sap, mixed with saltvine oil. One whiff and it’ll think it’s mating season."

Zephyr smirked thinking of something bad... something about him and Fenna, but held his breath as the scent slapped the air like an open palm. "That is awful."

Fenna grinned, smearing a glob on a nearby log. "Boars don’t have taste. Just instinct."

"We’ll use the paste to pull it toward the choke-point up ahead," Zephyr nodded. He pointed with his hatchet toward a natural bottleneck—two broken trunks collapsed inward, forming a narrow lane perfect for trapping a bulky creature.

"I’ll set the spider cord net just past the bottleneck," he added, voice lowering into tactics mode. "With burn-snares on either side. You circle left, lay fire-wort powder. Mask our scent, funnel it toward me."

Fenna’s grin widened with shared memory. "Just like the academy simulation—minus the safe-word."

Zephyr’s brows lifted. "Safe-word was ’help me’."