Book One – Chapter 15

She was a kyrthik, a race Yu knew well, yet he had never encountered one like her. She towered above him, far stronger than any female he had seen — or male, for that matter. Her abilities included a natural attunement to vibrations and seismic shifts, allowing her to sense danger long before others could. Though she did not lead or speak often, she held an undeniable authority within the group. And also, as she now returned to the fire and removed her cloak and armour, Yu realised Harrow was an anomaly.

In recent years, small groups of kyrthik had begun to settle along selected streams in the Barnstream regions, their presence stretching from the northern reaches to as far south as Rona. However, they confined themselves to tairan-led communities, avoiding the more habitable southern lands. The bormen, who held dominion over the fertile southern territories, actively suppressed tairan influence and opposed any kyrthik settlements, for these peoples competed for the scarce fish that swam in the freshwater rivers. Beyond fish, the kyrthik subsisted on algae and the mineral-rich structures that formed when the rivers ran dry, exposing the riverbeds. Their hybrid bodies were a grotesque fusion of living flesh and a unique mineral that grew directly from their skeletal structure. To sustain this, they refined and consumed calcified, clay-rich rock masses — an unfathomable resource that neither the bormen nor the tairan could contest.

As for Harrow, Yu had immediately recognised that the portions of her exoskeleton he had seen on her face and hands were denser and more pronounced than the fragile forms of the kyrthik he had encountered near his shirka’s human habitat. This was only the sixth night with the escort party, and the first time he had seen more of her. She had always worn her white cloak and armour, concealing her figure against the snow-covered landscape. Even at night, he had never seen her undress or change. He had always drifted to sleep while she prepared the camp or kept watch, only to wake to find her already on duty. Through it all, she had kept the heavy cloak draped over her.