Episode 33. The Price of Walking In
# Episode 33. The Price of Walking In
The silence after the crash did not last long.
While Jiwoo tore into the engine panel, Seorin organized the air inside the hull first. Sern read the wind speed and heat flow outside. Ater confirmed how far the remaining approval traces had died. Kael never once set the fragment on the floor, watching only outside the slit. Surviving was not the end — the state of what price to pay to move had begun.
Sion leaned against the hull wall and touched the paper inside his jacket once more.
*Hazran.*
*Aka.*
The two words still had no explanation. But now they felt less like a direction — more like a task. The only certainty was that something existed somewhere on this planet. Who, what, why Elia left that name — all still unknown. Yet strangely, that remained as a clearer goal. Not enough on its own — but the kind of line you cannot discard.
Jiwoo, upper body nearly shoved inside the panel, said.
"Nice."
She muttered low.
"Just wonderful. This broke beautifully."
Seorin followed at once.
"Can you save it or not."
Jiwoo did not answer for a long time, then — after prying something loose inside with a *tok* — pulled herself out. In her fingertips: a blackened response-line fragment.
"I can save it."
She said.
"But it absolutely cannot fly like this. One axis is near-dead, two auxiliary lift plates have delayed response. Without proper etherite, this thing becomes a coffin here."
Short silence.
Sion asked.
"How much do you need."
"Quality over quantity."
Jiwoo answered immediately.
"Not fake — real. And for this level of damage, powder won't work. Needs grain-alive material to bond."
Ater said low.
"Can you verify it."
Jiwoo exhaled something close to a scoff.
"I can roughly tell by looking — but on a place like Hazran, there'll be more people selling fakes."
Sern added quietly.
"Meaning we need to find both the goods and a hand that won't cheat."
Sion felt the paper inside his jacket more distinctly at the end of that sentence.
A hand that won't cheat.
Someone who can tell real from fake.
One name Elia left behind.
Aka.
Seorin looked at Sion.
"Overlaps."
Sion nodded, brief.
"Yeah."
Kael, hearing that, pulled his gaze from outside the slit for the first time.
"Is there a specific place selling etherite?"
Jiwoo rolled her shoulders once.
"There'll be places selling it. The question is whether the real thing is there."
Sern said, scanning the outer panel.
"The nearest heat-source trace is to the northeast. Not a large settlement, but overlapping transit-trade traces."
Ater continued.
"There are also marks leading out beyond the dead hull cluster. Not natural wind erosion — closer to a repeated travel line."
"Smells like a market."
Jiwoo said.
Seorin did not draw her conclusion immediately. Instead she looked through the slit at sand and frame shadows briefly, then asked.
"Pursuit ships."
Sern answered short.
"Sightlines severed immediately after heat layer passage. But it would be difficult to say they've fully lost us."
"Obviously."
Seorin said low.
"We fell alive, and they saw it."
Kael added, plain.
"They can't come down right away. But they'll try to find the trace."
Sion looked outside the slit again. Half-buried dead hull shadows, sandstorm sweeping between them, metal shells still holding heat. Hazran looked less like a destination — more like a place that could make surviving things endure longer or rot faster.
Seorin summarized short.
"Nice. Then we move."
"Now?"
Jiwoo asked back.
"Now."
Seorin cut.
"If we sit here going through this ship's full condition, the trace only gets deeper. Take what's needed and find the market first."
Jiwoo clicked her tongue as if swallowing complaint, but did not argue. In truth she knew better than anyone. The engine heat, the broken axis, the hot outer wall — she'd want to touch them before they cooled, but getting the materials to survive had to come first.
Ater asked quietly.
"Is it safe to leave the ship empty."
This time Kael spoke first.
"Not completely."
Short silence.
Seorin looked at him.
Kael said, pulling the fragment tighter inside.
"This place looks abandoned — but abandoned things get stripped first."
Jiwoo laughed small.
"Nice. Same thing I'd say."
Sion drew the picture naturally at the end of that brief exchange. Everyone leaves, the ship is exposed; everyone stays, nothing gets found. Someone had to stay; someone had to walk in.
Seorin seemed to reach the same conclusion.
"Sion and I go."
She said first.
"Check the market, find Aka's trace, look for the etherite hand at the same time."
Jiwoo said immediately.
"I stay."
That was less an expectation than a declaration.
"Leave this ship empty as-is and it's truly over. Need to reattach response lines and at least patch the torn sections temporarily."
Sern thought briefly, then said.
"Then I should stay as well. I hold the approach-line memory, so I need to keep watching whether pursuit reacquires."
Ater looked at Seorin before Sion.
"I will go with you."
Seorin asked short.
"Why."
"If approval afterecho remains at the market, I can see it first. And if we are finding a hand that distinguishes real from fake, my questioning direction will be more precise."
Sion thought that was not wrong.
That left Kael.
After a brief silence, Kael spoke first.
"I'm not staying."
Jiwoo raised an eyebrow.
"Fine if the ship gets stripped?"
"You alone will guard it better."
Kael said, plain.
"But finding something that smells like fragments out there — I might be faster."
That did not sound like bluster. Sion, Seorin, Ater — none immediately argued. This person had clearly chased similar fragments before, multiple times. The ability to price information at a market, dodge eyes, and follow scent — here, that was clearly useful.
Jiwoo clicked her tongue softly.
"Nice. So it's just me and Sern left."
"Complaints?"
Seorin asked.
"No."
Jiwoo answered flatly.
"But come back with something in hand."
Sion pulled out the paper from inside his jacket and unfolded it once more. *Hazran. Aka.* The sandwind seeped faintly inside, shaking the paper's edge.
Kael, watching that, asked.
"That name — is it a person?"
Sion answered short.
"Don't know yet."
Ater added low.
"But for now, assuming it is a person and moving accordingly is better."
Kael did not ask further. Instead only his gaze shifted, very faintly. Sion felt, in that brief moment — the sense of having seen before how a person's expression changes when the scent of fragments attaches to a name.
Preparations did not take long.
Seorin gathered water and a filtration wrap before weapons, plus transit-tag fragments. Ater organized a usable portable reader and remaining approval record strips. Sion pressed only the paper and minimum gear inside. Kael still held the fragment close to his body, already scanning the shortest line outward.
Jiwoo muttered, pulling out temporary hull patches.
"Good. Go. I'll hold this corpse alive."
Sern was already looking outside the slit, choosing the side without footprints.
"The northeast travel line is walkable. But better to ride frame shadows than open sand."
Seorin nodded.
"Nice. Follow the shadows."
When the hull door opened fully, Hazran's heat rushed inside.
Entirely different from the heat felt inside a spacecraft. Not machine heat — the heat of a planet exhaling breath it had warmed for ages. Sand, burned metal, old oil, dried wind — all rose at once.
Sion stepped outside and paused, very briefly.
The sand underfoot was less soft — more like ash mixed with metal powder. In the distance, half-buried dead hulls jutted from the desert like dead beast ribcages, and between them — traces of hands that had repeatedly passed, faintly connecting. Hazran was not a place with nothing. Rather — so much had been abandoned and left here that even people were not abandoned for long.
Kael stepped down first.
"Nice."
He said low.
"Smells alive."
Jiwoo fired back from inside the hull at once.
"I don't like that line at all."
Seorin did not reply — just looked ahead.
"Going."
With that single word, the four moved toward the dead hull shadows.
Behind them — a ship not yet fully dead, and two holding onto it.
Ahead — etherite, a person called only Aka, and a market where someone might try to price them first.
Hazran did not welcome them.
Instead, it looked like a place that told those who walked in to put their price forward first.