Dust. It was in everything—clinging to cracked bowls, soaked into ragged bedsheets, ground into the corners of Kael's teeth. The sun hadn't even fully risen, but already the pale light of the first of three suns bled across the broken slats in the ceiling, painting harsh streaks across the floor of the hut.
Kael stirred beneath the scrap-fabric mat that barely qualified as a blanket. Hunger gnawed at him again, a quiet reminder that he hadn't eaten since yesterday's errand. But worse than the hunger was the silence that followed it—the kind of silence that made his skin itch. The Ash Scavenger outpost was never truly quiet. Even in its earliest hours, someone was always shouting, hammering, burning something—or someone.
Outside, metal clanged against stone. A voice barked an order. Kael sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His hands were grimy, fingernails chipped from scraping rust and soot off ruined tools. He reached for the ragged satchel beside him, already knowing what was in it. Nothing. No rations. No flint. Just a half-cracked bone charm that had once belonged to his father. A relic of better days—or crueler lies.
He exhaled shakily and rose.
The hut's door groaned open. Outside, the ground shimmered faintly with heat. The second sun was climbing, and Trifidon—the rare convergence of all three suns—was rumored to strike within days. Maybe hours. People were already sealing their windows, muttering about the coming blaze. In Thaelora, Trifidon meant madness. Fires. Shadows moving where there should be none.
Kael didn't care. He had an errand.
"Oi, worm!" a voice spat behind him.
He turned too slowly. The boot met his ribs hard, sending him into the dust. Dazed, he looked up to see Raghn, one of the younger Ash Scavengers, towering above him. Raghn's face was smeared with ash, his eyes like scorched coal.
"You were s'posed to be at the smithshed before firstsun," Raghn growled. "Laziness breeds rot. You want rot in your bones, pissworm?"
Kael shook his head, coughing.
"Speak up, ash-licker!"
"No, sir," Kael rasped.
"Good. Run this to Lysra."
A bundle of cracked metal, gears, and scorched tubing was tossed into his arms. It nearly toppled him, but he caught it, just barely.
"She'll fix it, or I'll skin you both."
Raghn stomped off, leaving Kael in the dirt. Again.
He stood, wincing. Lysra's workshop was across the ravine bridge, under the canopy of half-sunk hangars that had once housed flying machines—if the old whispers were true. Now, it was a graveyard of twisted metal and decaying tech. A perfect place for someone like her.
As he walked, he kept to the edges. People here were volatile. You looked someone in the eye too long, you bled. The Ash Scavengers didn't believe in apologies, only dominance. Kael was neither feared nor respected—just tolerated. An errand boy. A breathing tool.
But not to Lysra.
Her workshop sat low and crooked, steam curling out from under warped metal sheets. Kael rapped once on the bent doorframe and slipped inside.
She didn't look up from her workbench.
"You're late," she muttered.
"I know."
"You get hit again?"
He shrugged.
"Of course you did. Sit down."
He eased the bundle onto her bench. She turned then, her eyes catching his for a split second—cold and calculating, like polished steel. But something flickered behind them, too—softness, concern, maybe even guilt. She masked it quickly.
"What'd they do this time?" she asked, prying apart the burned device with a precision blade.
"Just a kick."
"That's not 'just' anything, Kael."
"It's fine," he said, sitting on a crate.
She grunted, focusing back on the relic. Her fingers moved quickly, stripping wires and reattaching a cracked mana core.
"I could gut Raghn in under ten seconds," she said flatly. "Twelve if I'm being polite."
Kael chuckled, then stopped. "Don't."
"What?"
"You know what."
Lysra leaned in closer to the relic, lips tightening. "You keep letting them do this, one day you won't wake up."
"I'm not... like you, Lysra."
Her jaw clenched. "No, you're not. You're softer. That's not a weakness. Not yet."
Silence settled again, thick with heat and tension. In the distance, alarms moaned faintly—a sign that heat levels were nearing breach.
Kael looked down at his hands, then back at the door.
"I should go," he said quietly.
Lysra nodded once. "Be careful."
He slipped out, the heat already rising.
Trifidon was coming.
And in the Ash Scavenger territories, nothing ever burned clean.