Chapter 82 Ridgepoint
(Zuri POV)
The storm hasn’t stopped.
Hours after the fire, the rain keeps falling, steady, deliberate, as if the sky’s trying to wash away what Ember Pass became. I don’t think it can. The smell of smoke lives under my skin now, threaded into my breath. Every inhale tastes like ash.
We reach Ridgepoint at dawn. It’s not much, an abandoned supply station buried in the hills, half the walls caved in, the roof patched with tarps and prayer. But it’s shelter. And after last night, that’s the closest thing to mercy we get.
Rex gets the generators running while the rest of the crew hauls in what’s left of the gear. No one talks much. The silence between us feels like mourning, but sharper. It has weight. Direction.
Amani’s outside, standing where the trees thin into fog. He hasn’t said a word since we left the pass. Just lit one cigarette after another like the smoke keeps him tethered to the ground.
I watch him through the cracked window, shoulders tense, jaw set. I can tell by the way he holds his body that something inside him is breaking, but he won’t let anyone see it. That’s how he grieves. Quiet. Controlled. Dangerous.
I pull my jacket tighter, ignoring the throb in my arm. The wound’s stitched and bandaged, but the ache isn’t just physical. It’s everything we lost in those tunnels — Ghost, the men who followed him, the fragile hope we thought we could build in the dark.
Ghost.
Even thinking his name feels wrong, like stepping on sacred ground. He wasn’t my friend, not really — but he mattered to Amani, and by extension, to all of us. He was loyalty made human, until loyalty cost him his life.
Rex drops beside me, grease on his hands and exhaustion in his eyes. “Power’s up, barely. Enough to keep lights and comms running.”
“Good,” I say quietly.
He studies me for a second. “You should rest. You’re running on fumes.”
“So is everyone else.”
“Yeah,” he says. “But everyone else isn’t the boss’s trigger.”
I glance at him, surprised. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugs. “You keep him from exploding. Or worse — from shutting down. When you’re not around, he goes quiet. Too quiet.”
I don’t answer, because he’s right.
Rex wipes his hands on his jeans. “You ever think about what happens if one day you’re not there to do that?”
I look out at Amani again, the way his silhouette cuts through the fog — solid and unmovable, like the storm itself bends around him. “I don’t plan on not being there.”
Rex huffs a laugh. “Then maybe you’re the crazy one.”
“Maybe.”
He pats my shoulder and walks off, muttering something about checking the perimeter.
When he’s gone, I step outside. The cold hits like a slap — sharp, cleansing. The rain’s slowed to a mist now, hanging low over the valley. I stop beside Amani. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t need to. He knows it’s me.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he says. His voice is rough from smoke and silence.
“Neither should you.”
He exhales a laugh that isn’t really a laugh. “You planning to start giving me orders now?”
“Someone has to.”
That earns me a glance — just a flick of those eyes that have seen too much and still burn. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“I think you’re trying too hard to pretend it doesn’t hurt.”
That gets a reaction — a twitch of his jaw, a crack in the armor.
“You lost people too,” he says quietly.
“I did.”
“Then why are you still standing?”
“Because if I stop now, I’ll never start again.”
He studies me for a long moment — really looks at me. “You sound like him.”
“Ghost?”
“Yeah.” He looks away, smoke curling from his cigarette. “He said something like that once. Back when we were nobodies. Said the trick to surviving isn’t being fearless — it’s moving while you’re scared.”
I swallow hard. “Then let’s move.”
He flicks the cigarette into the mud and finally faces me. “You really think there’s anything left to fight with?”
“Yes,” I say. “Us.”
The word hangs between us — heavier than it should be, but real.
He shakes his head, half-smiling, half-breaking. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Not on you.”
For a second, the distance between us shrinks — just enough for the air to shift. The kind of closeness that doesn’t need touch to be felt.
Then the generator sputters inside, breaking whatever that moment could’ve been.
Amani looks back toward the building. “We’ll rest today. Move at first light. Ridgepoint’s too exposed.”
“And Antonio?”
He meets my eyes. “He’s coming. We just need to decide whether we wait or hit first.”
I nod, though part of me already knows — Amani’s not built to wait.
When he walks back inside, I stay in the rain a little longer. The valley below is nothing but shadow and smoke. The world feels hollow, but there’s something alive under it. Something rebuilding itself out of ruin.
I think Ghost would’ve liked that.
He always said the war wasn’t about power — it was about who could still stand after everything fell apart.
I wipe the rain from my face and whisper to no one, “Then watch me stand.”