Chapter 5 Love and Escape

The Heart of Zandoria pulsed in Elias's pack-no longer glowing with celestial fire, but radiating warmth like a living ember. The jungle around them had changed. The wind was sharper. The shadows deeper. As if the temple's awakening had stirred something that had long slumbered.

Kaela moved ahead, senses alert. Her bow was drawn, every step placed with precision. But even she could not stop what came next.

A shout.

The crack of a gunshot.

Bark exploded from a tree inches from Elias's head.

He hit the ground. Kaela yanked him behind a fallen trunk.

"Mercenaries," she hissed. "How did they find us?"

Elias cursed. "My radio... I thought it was dead after the crash."

There were six of them, maybe more-heavily armed, dressed in camouflage that didn't match any flag. They were professionals, the kind who didn't ask questions, only counted coin. One of them called out in rough English.

"Give us the Heart. We'll make it fast."

Kaela's eyes darkened. "They desecrate sacred land and speak of mercy?"

She loosed an arrow. A scream followed.

What happened next blurred into chaos-gunfire tearing through vines, Kaela moving like a spirit of the forest, Elias ducking, dodging, returning fire with a scavenged pistol. The trees became smoke and flame, sacred ground torn by greed.

And still, the Heart pulsed.

It began to glow again, brighter now, angry.

Kaela grabbed Elias's arm. "It doesn't want to be taken like this."

He looked at her, chest heaving. "Then we leave it?"

"No," she said. "We protect it. But not at the cost of our lives."

As another bullet zipped past, Elias made a choice.

He ran to the edge of a ravine that yawned into the earth-bottomless, ancient. He took the Heart from his pack. Its light flared, blinding white. A final pulse, as if it understood.

Then he threw it.

The mercenaries screamed, racing toward the edge. One fired, but Kaela was faster. Her arrow found its mark. The Heart fell into the abyss, swallowed by vines and mist and silence.

Elias turned, bleeding and breathless. "Tell me that wasn't a mistake."

Kaela stepped beside him, eyes locked on the void.

"No," she said. "It was a promise."

They fled through the trees, deeper into the jungle Kaela called home. Gunfire faded behind them. Roots tore at their boots, rivers tried to sweep them away, but they kept moving-until the jungle itself seemed to shelter them.

Eventually, they collapsed in a clearing beneath a canopy of stars.

They said nothing for a long time. Just listened to the night.

Elias turned to her. "We lost the treasure."

Kaela looked at him, the corner of her mouth curling into something like a smile.

"Did we?"

He took her hand. In it was the journal-his drawings, glyphs, notes from the trial. Proof of what they'd seen. What they'd saved.

More importantly, in that clearing, far from the world of greed and guns, they had each other.

And maybe, Elias thought, that was the true treasure all along.