Free Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) by D.K. Holmberg

going?” she asked.
    Fas shook his head. “Your father has changed since the… attack, I suppose we should call it. Withdrawn. He goes out to Nisa Point and stares, standing all alone for hours at a time.”
    Her father had often gone to the point when she was young, but never for hours, and never so often that others would comment on it. Most figured he went to survey for water, that he could no longer climb the rock tower as he once had, but Ciara thought he had another reason for going. Not for water, but for quiet, to be alone, away from the steady pulsing of everyone around him that he struggled to ignore, hoping for the chance to reach her mother once more.
    They followed her father. He stopped outside the cavern and waited while she and Fas climbed down, and then started to the north, climbing up the steep ridge that led to Nisa Point. Ciara noted that he moved slower than he once would have, that he relied on his j’na to catch him more often than he should, but he still managed the climb.
    Out in the sun, her j’na caught the light of the sun almost as if absorbing it, as if the draasin glass wanted to swallow the light. Fas glanced at it but said nothing. The climb to the top of the point had always been challenging, but it was nothing like what she had faced climbing while out on the waste.
    They reached the top, where her father faced north. “I’ve come here often of late.”
    “That’s what Fas tells me.”
    “Fas. He’s a good man. A strong nya’shin,” he said, as if forgetting that Fas had climbed with her. “A pairing with Fas would serve you well, I think.”
    Ciara flushed. A pairing with Fas once had seemed all that she wanted. Well, that and becoming a true nya’shin. Now that she had the spear, she felt that she was nya’shin, but she no longer knew if she wanted Fas in the same way. He seemed strong enough, to be sure, but she had seen weakness in him that she couldn’t ignore.
    “Father?”
    He turned to her. “What happened to you while on the waste, Ciara? What did you see?”
    “I…” She hesitated, looking out from the point for the first time in many years. Like many in the village, she’d climbed Nisa Point; it was a source of pride as a child, much like climbing the rock tower was a source of pride for those able to become nya’shin. But once she’d climbed Nisa, she hadn’t felt the need for many years. What was there atop the rock for her to see that she wouldn’t be able to see from atop the tower?
    She would have said nothing, but the point gave her a different vantage. Now that she’d reached the peak of the tower, however much Fas might have helped, she saw that there were differences here. They lived in the midst of a hot, rocky landscape. It was not quite the waste; there, the ever-shifting dunes made navigating it difficult, if not impossible. But little grew.
    From here she saw scattered plants, from the waxy-leaved cacti that thrived to the stunted and dried copach trees, and even a few small bulas shrubs. When the bulas berried after a hard rain, the ripe fruit held water along with the foul-tasting berries. Not nearly as much as the gourds brought to her by the lizard, but still enough that the nya’shin had learned to collect them and carry them with them as they traveled, searching for water.
    Beyond the plants, standing atop the point revealed a single fox slinking across the rock. Ciara suspected it chased rabbits, or possibly desert mice, but what did she really know? Maybe it searched for water, much like her people did.
    Then there was the haze of heat rising above the ground that reminded her of the way the sand caught the air while she was in the waste. In so many ways, the bleak and hard rock of Rens was not all that dissimilar from the waste, even though her people thought they were so different and feared crossing.
    Would the lizard be found here? Did it sit out on the rock, watching over her as it had seemed to do while she crossed the