The desert had always been cruel, but inside the slaver's camp it became unbearable. The dunes beyond the perimeter walls glowed faintly under the moonlight, their slopes twisting like frozen waves, their silence mocking the chaos within. The camp was alive with noise—chains rattling against cages, guards barking orders, prisoners coughing and moaning in the suffocating dark. The stench was overpowering: sweat, blood, piss, and rotting meat all fermenting under the day's leftover heat. The air itself was thick, almost oily, clinging to the lungs with every breath.
The cages were scattered like discarded bones, jagged rectangles of rust and iron arranged without order. Each bar was coated with decades of neglect, brown-orange corrosion flaking off like ash whenever touched. In one of those cages, earlier, a prisoner had defied a guard. That single spark had kindled into something larger, something dangerous.
And now the flame was standing in the open.
The red-haired man.
The rags that once clung to him were gone, shredded and discarded in the commotion. His hair, wild and spiked like fire, caught the light of the campfires and shimmered with an unholy gleam, a crimson blaze that made him appear less like a man and more like a phantom. His eyes, though—those were the worst. Deep red, almost black at their core, but alive with energy, with hunger. They glowed faintly, like molten coals, and the guard nearest him couldn't look into them without feeling as though his skin were peeling away.
The guard himself was massive, his chest broad as a wall, his beard thick and greasy, hanging in clumps down his scarred chin. He had a face that should have intimidated anyone in the camp: a crooked nose from too many fights, a scar running across his cheek, lips perpetually curled into a snarl. His dark coat was decorated with copper rings and trophies—knives taken from enemies, bones carved into crude charms, even a child's necklace twisted around his belt. He was the kind of man built on cruelty, the type who lived on the fear of others.
And yet now, with his pistol trembling in his hand, he looked like prey.
The red-haired man stood utterly still, his bare feet planted in the sand, the muscles in his lean frame coiled but relaxed, like a predator waiting for the exact second to strike. His smile was subtle, almost gentle, but that made it worse. It wasn't the grin of a man enjoying a joke—it was the grin of someone savoring inevitability.
The guard's fingers twitched around the gun's grip. His heart thundered in his chest, every beat echoing in his skull. The weight of the pistol should have felt comforting, but now it was leaden, clumsy, as though it belonged to someone else entirely.
"You drew your gun."
The words broke the silence like glass. The red-haired man spoke softly, his tone oddly casual, yet every syllable dripped with an excitement that sent shivers up the guard's spine. His eyes shimmered with something primal—anticipation, hunger.
The guard swallowed, his throat tight, sweat dripping from his temple.
"Are you prepared to use it, though?"
It was a ridiculous question. Utterly ridiculous. The guard had killed dozens of men, maybe hundreds. Bandits, rivals, rebellious slaves. Pulling the trigger was as natural to him as breathing. And yet… the words rooted him to the spot. Was he? Prepared? Why did the thought stick like a thorn in his mind?
He gritted his teeth, trying to find his voice. "O-of course I am!" he barked, but the crack in his tone betrayed him. He pushed the gun forward, jabbing the air. "S-so get back in your cage! Right now!"
The red-haired man tilted his head, his crimson eyes never leaving the guard's face. He didn't flinch, didn't move, didn't even blink. He just smiled wider, as though enjoying a private joke at the man's expense.
The words hung in the air like a funeral bell.
"I'm afraid," he said at last, voice low but clear, "I can't do that."
The sound of it was soft, but it carried with unnatural weight. It didn't feel like the defiance of a prisoner—it felt like a decree, as though the desert itself had paused to hear him. The prisoners in the surrounding cages shifted in their shadows, iron chains clinking as fingers tightened around rusted bars. Their eyes, long dulled by despair, widened with something they hadn't allowed themselves in years: hope. Or maybe it was fear. In this place, the two looked the same.
The guard's nostrils flared. He was a mountain of a man, shoulders broad enough to eclipse the fire behind him, his coat swaying as the desert wind pushed at its heavy folds. His beard, matted with sweat and filth, glistened under the torchlight. For years he had lived off the terror of men—bandits, slaves, travelers snatched from caravans. Fear was his nourishment, his shield, his weapon.
And yet now, standing before the man with fire in his hair, his pride battled a growing sickness in his gut.
His voice broke through the silence, strained but loud. "Well then I'm afraid I'll have to kill you."
He raised his pistol. His finger tightened on the trigger.
BANG.
The shot split the night. The crack echoed against the distant dunes, carried on the dry wind like the roar of an angry god. Sparks burst from the muzzle, smoke coiling upward into the star-pricked blackness. The bullet screamed across the few feet of air between them, a streak of death, a promise of finality.
But it never touched him.
The red-haired man did not flinch. He did not blink. He did not even breathe differently.
Instead, a pulse of light shimmered into being around him, subtle at first, then violent—a bloom of crimson energy that rippled outward like heat from a forge. The bullet slowed as though the air itself had thickened, its shriek faltering until, impossibly, it froze mid-flight. Two inches from his forehead, it hovered, spinning slowly in its crimson cocoon.
The guard's face twisted in disbelief. His jaw sagged, his eyes bulging. The pistol shook violently in his hand.
"What… w-what are you?" he whispered, the words dragged out of him against his will.
The red-haired man tilted his head, examining the little piece of lead as one might regard a bothersome fly. He raised his hand, palm open, fingers curved as though holding an invisible thread. With a faint snap, the bullet dissolved, unraveling into a fine red dust that scattered on the night air like ash.
Then he looked at the guard, and his smile curved—not with kindness, but with cruelty.
"You never were prepared."
The words broke something inside the man. His throat clenched. His heart skipped. A sudden pain seized his chest. His breath came ragged.
And then—
Cough.
Blood splattered from his lips, black-red under the torchlight, staining his beard, dripping down his neck. His eyes went wide, trembling, as though some unseen hand had carved through him.
A thin line traced across his face, appearing like ink bleeding through parchment. It began just below his left eye, slicing diagonally across his cheek, ending at the hinge of his jaw. The cut deepened in silence, the flesh quivering before splitting apart. Slowly, grotesquely, the upper half of his head slid from the lower, tearing free with a wet sound that made the nearby prisoners gag.
The pistol fell to the sand.
For a heartbeat, impossibly, his body remained upright, half a face dangling, eyes rolling in disbelief.
Then the red-haired man lifted his hand again. He did not speak. He did not gesture wildly. He simply snapped his fingers.
The body detonated.
It wasn't an explosion of fire, but of flesh—bone bursting outward in jagged fragments, muscle and sinew tearing apart with the wet, ripping sound of meat being butchered. Shards of rib flew like shrapnel. A femur spun end over end before clattering against the iron bars of a cage. Blood rained down in hot droplets, steaming as it hit the sand and iron.
Prisoners screamed. One man clutched his arm as a splinter of skull embedded itself deep into his flesh. Another shielded his face, only to be painted with gore. The smell of iron, hot and metallic, filled the camp, mixing with the smoke of torches and the stench of rot.
For a long moment, silence followed.
Every prisoner stared at him. Some with horror, some with awe. A few bowed their heads instinctively, as though in worship. The guards who had been circling the camp froze in place, hands hovering near their weapons, paralyzed between the instinct to draw and the certainty of death.
The desert wind hissed, carrying grains of sand across the blood-soaked earth.
The red-haired man stepped forward. His bare feet pressed into the sand, each step leaving behind faint, dark crimson prints, as though the earth itself bled under his weight. His hair, spiked and wild, shone with the firelight, glowing faintly as if each strand were a coal plucked from a dying forge. His chest was lean, the muscles carved as though from stone, but it was his eyes that drew all attention. They glowed with a faint crimson halo, unblinking, unmerciful.
He walked past the still-smoking remains of the guard without a glance, his gaze sweeping across the camp.
The prisoners dared not breathe. The guards dared not move.
For in that moment, all who looked upon him knew one thing with absolute certainty.
The red-haired man did not belong to the world of men.
He was something else.
Something worse.
Something inevitable.