The storm had passed, but it left its mark. Wind-torn sand buried half the world, stripping color and softening bone. The convoy limped forward in silence, each rig coughing smoke, each driver wide-eyed and silent. None of them could shake the image: the man in black armor, walking out of the fire, dragging a flail made of engine chains and bloodied steel.
Max sat beside Furiosa in the lead rig, watching the horizon. The road ahead was cracked and yawning, dotted with ruined fuel drums and broken signage half-swallowed by dunes.
"He's still following us," Furiosa muttered.
Max didn't reply. He didn't have to.
In the side mirror, distant but unwavering, the Revenant rode alone. No war rig, no tribe. Just a salvaged muscle bike, stripped down and armored like a predator's bones. It moved like its rider—silent, unrelenting.
"What does he want?" Toast asked, perched near the back with a rifle across her knees.
"Not us," Furiosa said. "Not yet."
In the war-ravaged outlands, silence was rare. But this stretch—known only as the Hollow Highway—was quiet in a way that dug into your teeth. No war cries. No music. Just wind, rust, and the faint rattle of bones tied to makeshift scarecrows along the edge.
"Revenant territory," Max muttered.
They all knew the tales. How entire factions would turn back rather than cross these sands. How a Citadel raiding party once entered the Hollow Highway and were never heard from again. Not wiped out—erased. Their bones never found. Their vehicles gone. As if the sand swallowed everything.
But now they had no choice. The War Boys were still hunting. The Bullet Farmers had regrouped. There was no path forward but through the shadow of the Revenant.
---
The convoy stopped at dusk. Not because of fuel or failure—because the road ahead was marked.
A rusted sign, freshly painted in ash and oil: a symbol of a skull impaled by a wrench.
"The Iron Dogs," Furiosa whispered.
One of the lesser factions—mad scavengers known for decorating themselves in shredded wire and grinding teeth. But even they avoided the Hollow Highway.
Max crouched beside the sign, hand tracing the symbol. "A warning?"
"Or a grave marker."
They drove on, slower now. Darkness thickened. The sand changed—blackened in patches, slick with what looked like melted rubber. Bullet holes marked the rocks. Shattered bones stuck out of half-buried war rigs like splinters.
"We're driving through a battlefield," Toast muttered.
"No," Furiosa corrected, eyes hard. "A massacre."
And then the Revenant appeared again.
No sound. No dust trail. Just there—a hundred feet ahead, straddling his machine, motionless like a scarecrow waiting for the crows. Furiosa braked hard. The others followed.
He turned without a word, engine growling low like a caged beast. Then he veered right—off the highway.
"He wants us to follow," said Max.
"Do we?"
Furiosa hesitated—but then turned the wheel.
---
They reached a ravine before midnight—deep, jagged, carved into the earth like an open wound. In its gut lay wreckage. Not recent. Old. Years old. Burnt war machines, scorched banners, rusted bodies twisted in agony. It was a war grave.
They parked.
The Revenant was already walking among the dead, his silhouette framed by the burning remains of one of their scout bikes. He knelt beside a melted skull, touched it once, then stood.
"Why here?" Furiosa asked, finally stepping out of the rig.
He didn't answer at first. But then his voice rasped out through the hiss of his mask:
"This is where they learned to fear me."
The others gathered, quiet, watching.
Furiosa dared to speak again. "What happened?"
He turned slowly.
"I was one of them."
---
[Flashback – Years Earlier]
The Iron Dogs. Back then, a ruthless, screaming tribe of metal fiends, run by a warlord called Spinehook. He was cruel, cunning, and loved the Revenant—back then just a man named Kael—as a favorite killer.
Kael had earned that favor through fire. Smart. Efficient. Merciless.
Until the day Spinehook ordered them to raid a refugee convoy: women, children, scavvers, no arms.
Kael refused.
And Spinehook made an example of him. Chained him to a half-dead rig, filled it with fuel, and lit it.
He should've died.
But he didn't.
Burned. Scarred. Left for dead in the Hollow Highway.
For seven days, Kael clawed his way out of the wreck. Drank radiator fluid. Ate what he could find. Made armor from the bones of those left behind. His voice was gone. His name burned away.
Then he returned.
And he killed them all.
Not in a blaze. Not with noise.
One by one.
Traps. Poisoned fuel. Bladed mines. A scream in the night. A war rig found with its crew crucified in silence.
By the end of the month, the Iron Dogs had no name. Just whispers. Just fear.
That's when the legend began.
---
[Present]
The flashback ended in silence.
Only the wind moved.
No one spoke.
The convoy looked around at the remains of what had once been a war band. The silence wasn't peace. It was warning.
"You left them all behind," Furiosa said quietly.
"They were never mine," the Revenant rasped.
Max stepped closer. "And us?"
"You're not like them."
"Because we're trying to get away?"
"No." The Revenant's head tilted, his mask hissing. "Because you haven't turned on each other yet."
The statement hung in the air like a challenge.
Then he turned and walked toward his bike. "Stay the night. Leave by dawn. They won't follow you this deep."
"Who?" asked Toast.
"The ones coming next."
He rode off into the night, no light, no roar. Just the fading hiss of tires on sand.
---
They stayed.
That night, none of them slept.
Because sometimes silence isn't safety. It's what comes before the screaming.
And they all knew: the worst was still coming.
But they also knew this—
If the Revenant was near…
They might just survive it.