They walked the ridge with the wind in their faces and the sun at their backs—three figures between dune and shore.
Eryn kept his mother's pendant clenched until its edges pressed little half-moons into his palm. Every so often he loosened his grip to check it was still there, then tightened his fingers again, as if the desert might steal it on a dare.
"Drink," Amon said, passing over a skin without looking. His voice carried the quiet certainty of someone used to being obeyed.
Eryn drank, coughed, and handed it back. "Thanks."
Bolt fell into step on Eryn's other side, his grin ready-made.
"Rule one of deserts," he said, "never argue with water. Rule two, never trust dunes that look too pretty. Rule three—if I make it to five rules, we're already dead."
Amon snorted despite himself. "We're close."
They cut down through a sandstone throat. From here, the three of them stood clear in the light:
Amon — Lean, tall, with sun-burnished brown skin. Forearms wrapped in linen revealed old burns beneath. A sand-colored cloak pinned at one shoulder. A glass jackal mask at his hip, its facets catching the sun without glare. A copper-banded ceramic gourd at his waist glowed faintly warm. Tight coils of hair pulled into a short knot. Amber eyes steady as heated glass.
Bolt — Deep brown skin, coily hair cropped close at the sides and wild on top, curls swaying when he laughed. Broad-shouldered, in a pocketed vest, heavy scuffed boots, fingerless gloves. An azure ring winked without flashing. Eyes quick, bright, and always two jokes ahead.
Eryn — Sixteen, wiry from work more than training. Dark wind-tossed hair falling into gray-blue eyes he wished were harder to read. A salt-stained tunic, an empty belt, and his mother's pendant: a dull coin etched with arcs, hanging heavy on a cord at his neck.
They topped the last rise. The village lay below.
Or what was left of it.
No gulls. No shouts. Only the creak of something half-burned, and the hiss of wind dragging ash over stone.
Bolt didn't joke. "Saints," he said softly.
Amon lifted a hand, tracing a small, precise shape in the air. [Veilweaving — Veil Touch]. The air at his fingertips rippled like heat over stone.
"Residual resonance," he murmured, kneeling by a collapsed wall. He ran two fingers along a cut beam—edges too clean, the wood charred but not splintered. "Precision sever. Obsidian Pact. Low-void signature." He glanced at Eryn. "I'm sorry."
Eryn was already moving, drawn forward—not running, not walking—just pulled. Maybe by the smoke's drift, the lay of the ground, or the way the pendant warmed when he turned a certain way. He stepped over a shattered jar of spices, past Kesa's stall where coins had fused into a single sheet, past the chalked shrine stone where someone had tried—and failed—to scrub away the nested crescents.
He found her where the roof had collapsed.
The world dimmed at the edges. For a heartbeat, he saw two versions of the room—one with baskets and laughter, one with charcoal bones and a hand he knew by its shape.
He knelt. At first, no tears—just his hand over hers, his throat closing. When they came, they were quiet, unremarkable, and hard to stop.
Amon stood in the doorway, silent. Bolt hovered, then crouched and set a small square of clean cloth on the floor, as if that could fix anything.
Eryn wiped his face, noticing the pendant now hung openly. He tucked it under his shirt—it felt wrong—so he let it lie where it wanted.
"She told me to run," he said, to no one. "I did."
"You obeyed," Amon said. "That takes more courage than most."
"I left," Eryn said.
"Good," Bolt said, blunt but gentle. "Because you're alive."
Amon moved with a soldier's patience, pointing without touching: obsidian shards smoothed by their own wrongness; footprints that were more absences than impressions; scorch marks that didn't match fire.
"They weren't here to kill," he said. "They were here to test the ground. And to take something." He glanced at the pendant again, not asking.
Eryn stood. The world he knew felt small and warped, like a toy left in the rain.
"We should—" He swallowed. "I want to bury—"
"We can mark," Amon said, thinking of the clock he wished he didn't hear. "We'll come back."
Bolt put a hand on Eryn's shoulder. "We come back," he promised.
Something shifted under the ash. The pendant warmed. The air… hummed.
"Did you feel—" Eryn began.
"—that," Amon finished, already turning. "Move."
The first tremor was almost polite. The second was not. Sand in the far alley sank like a throat swallowing, then vomited up a sand serpent through a cracked floor.
It was bigger than the stories—scales matte as cooled metal, eyes the color of oven mouths. Its jaws opened, and the whole street tilted toward its hunger.
Bolt's ring flared. [Living Barriers — Flicker Panel]. A flat pane of translucent force snapped between them and the serpent's first blast of sand. It hit like a thrown house, the panel buckling before holding long enough for them to dive aside.
"RUN!" Bolt shouted—pointlessly.
They ran. The serpent reared, hissed, and smashed down again, following like a tide—not chasing them, but erasing where they wanted to be.
Amon veered through a gap. [Glasscraft — Step Tiles] rose under his feet, bridging a broken alley. He looked back—Eryn was a step slow, favoring one ankle. Amon swept his palm, raising a low [Glass Ramp] to give him a clean path.
Bolt sprinted backward, buying time. [Living Barriers — Partition Shield]: one panel in front of each of them, moving as they moved, catching the serpent's spray and shunting it sideways.
"Why is it always teeth?" Bolt yelled, mostly at the universe.
"Because you talk about it," Amon said, hauling Eryn over a beam.
Eryn risked a glance back—the serpent coiled with obscene grace, following heat and motion. The pendant throbbed against his chest like a second heart. He didn't ask if that was good.
They burst from the ruins, sand cascading behind them.
"The twin oases," Amon said, already setting their angle. "We finish the ritual, or Keystra dries."
"We're being eaten," Bolt said.
"We can do both," Amon replied.
Eryn's hand curled instinctively in the shape Amon had shown him. [Veilweaving — Veil Touch]. The air behind them rippled—the serpent stuttered, just for a breath. Enough.
Amon glanced back, approval sharp and wordless. "Again."
Eryn did it again, smaller, cleaner, stealing them five strides.
They reached a run the body can't hold without deciding to, and kept it. The serpent dove; the dune collapsed; they skated down its falling face like stones skipping across a bad idea.
"Left!" Amon barked.
"Your other left!" Bolt corrected.
They cleared the ridge—quiet for a heartbeat. Ahead: the desert opened like a hand. Far beyond, a gleam of impossible blue—the twin oases. Between them, a lot of sand with opinions.
The serpent punched through the dune, roaring hunger and delight, and tunneled after.
"New rule," Bolt said, cheerful on the knife-edge of fear. "If we live, I'm never sleeping again."
Eryn clutched the pendant, loosed another Veil Touch, and felt the air resist the beast like a net that had only just remembered it was a net.
"Good," Amon said. And that was all the praise they needed.
They ran for the oases as the desert decided who it liked more.