The four hours of allotted rest passed in a suffocating, heavy silence.
Kyle didn't sleep. He sat with his back pressed against the curved stone wall of the fissure, his arm wrapped firmly around Yua's waist. She had fallen into a deep, silent exhaustion, her head resting heavily against his chest, her soft breaths warm against his collarbone. Every few minutes, her dark lashes would flutter, her fingers tightening on his torn sleeve as if checking to ensure he was still there beside her in the dark.
[Kyle,] Snow's voice spoke gently inside his skull, her tone light and careful, framed by the quiet pulse of his neural link. [The atmospheric boundary outside the cave mouth is shifting. The thermal heat of the red sand is dropping as the central heart-sun dips lower behind the horizon. You have approximately twenty minutes before the dark cycle begins.]
