The desert wind rattled the fabric of the camp's golden tents. Rhea stood outside with two guards, their plasma rifles gleaming under the dim lamps. Her arms were crossed, and her jaw tight.
When Johan, Tom, and Arlong stepped out into the cool night, they caught her just as she dismissed the guards with a flick of her hand.
Johan tilted his head, his voice calm but edged. "You're frowning hard enough to cut glass. What happened, Rhea? Or should I not ask?"
She didn't answer at once. Her gaze stayed on the sand as if she could read shapes in the shifting grains. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet but sharp. "There's a traitor. Someone among us is leaking information. Not to another sect, not to a rival camp—" her eyes narrowed, "—but to a Miracle Order."
Tom exchanged a quick glance with Arlong. He spoke first, cautious. "Miracle…. Order? Sounds like some kind of church."
Rhea laughed once, but there was no humor in it. "Churches kneel to gods. Miracle Orders kneel to nothing. They reject deities, reject Faces, reject even the laws written into the bones of this world. They gather artifacts, forbidden techniques, illusions so seductive they warp the mind. They call them 'miracles' but they're just chains disguised as gifts."
Arlong adjusted the strap of his bow, his tone skeptical. "Chains that lead where?"
"To the Overseers," Rhea said flatly. "Every Miracle Order I've studied ends the same way. They carve miracles into flesh, build them into tools, twist them into prayers. As of when the hour comes…" She hesitated, her lips tightening. "…an Overseer descends."
The silence that followed was heavy.
Johan finally broke it, folding his arms. "You think one of your own is letting them in. Feeding them. The question is 'Why'?"
"That's the puzzle," she admitted. "The evidence is fragments. Provisions gone missing, encrypted reports delivered to the wrong channels, marks I don't recognize drawn in the dust near the supply tents. Small things. But they add up."
Tom frowned. "What kind of marks?"
Rhea's eyes shifted to him. "Spirals.... Always spirals. Three coiled lines, meeting at a single point. When you look at it too long, your vision…. burns. As if something's pulling at you from behind your eyes."
Tom felt the hair at the back of his neck stand.
Arlong whistled in quite tone. "That's not just a doodle."
"No," Rhea said. "That's a door and someone here is trying to open it."
Johan's expression hardened, his jaw tight. "If it is a Miracle Order, then you don't have a traitor. You have a zealot. And zealots don't stop until they've burned everything around them."
Rhea gave a slight nod. "Exactly. Which means I need eyes sharper than mine to help find them." She glanced at Tom, at Arlong, then let her gaze linger on Johan. "Because the Order always works from shadows. They hide inside crowds. They wear smiles. Sometimes, even I start wondering if it's someone I've trusted for years."
The wind groaned against the tents again, carrying grains of sand like whispers.
Tom shifted uneasily, muttering, "So it could be anyone."
"Anyone," Rhea repeated. "You know the cruelest part?" She leaned closer, lowering her voice. "The culprit may not even know they're a culprit. Some miracles.… take root in dreams. You wake up different. You serve without knowing you are serving something."
Her words hit in Tom and Arlong 's brain, heavy as a sentence not yet delivered.
The three of them lingered near the tent after Rhea's words, keeping their voices low. Johan leaned against a post, arms crossed, his eyes half-shut like he was drifting between thought and sleep.
Arlong fiddled with the string of his bow, humming faintly, while Tom scratched the edge of his chair with a dagger tip, lost in thought.
The night was heavy, filled with the dry hiss of the desert wind against the fabric walls.
Then a scream ripped the air.
A guard stumbled out from behind one of the tents. His face was pale, his pupils shrunk into tiny dots. He clawed at his own helmet and let it fall to the sand. His chest rose and fell like a cornered animal, and he shouted words none of them could make out.
Tom jumped to his feet. Arlong reached for his bow, but Johan's hand shot out, stopping him.
The guard's body moved on its own, jerking, twitching, like invisible strings were pulling him apart. Then, with a guttural cry, he lunged forward, plasma blade sparking in his hand, straight at Tom.
Tom ducked back on instinct, his pulse spiking aloud.
Johan stepped in, calm but deadly. His hand shot forward—not to strike the man, but to shove his palm into the guard's mouth. The guard gagged, thrashing, eyes rolling. Johan's arm tensed as if wrestling with something inside the man's throat.
Then he pulled.
With a wet, tearing sound, Johan ripped something out. A slick, writhing thing dangled in his fist. Thin like a cockroach's body, jointed like an ant, its black carapace twitching. It squealed, high-pitched and piercing, flailing its tiny legs as if trying to burrow back into flesh.
Tom's stomach turned. "What the hell is that?"
Johan didn't answer. He clenched his hand, and a surge of blue flame erupted, swallowing the parasite whole. The fire burned clean, leaving not even ash behind.
The guard collapsed, unconscious, twitching weakly in the sand.
Only then did Johan speak, voice low and certain. "That.… wasn't random. Parasites like this don't wander into soldiers' mouths on their own." His gaze swept across the camp, eyes sharp as knives. "This means the culprit Rhea spoke of…. is here. Nearby spectating us."
Arlong's face darkened. He glanced toward the shadows stretching between the tents. "Then whoever it is, they're not just hiding. They're planting every single seed carefully to reach their knife under our throat."
Tom's hand tightened on his dagger. His mind raced, remembering Rhea's spirals in the sand. Remembering how easy it was to walk past someone, brush a shoulder, and never notice what slipped inside.
Rhea came running with two guards at her side, violet chlamys fluttering behind her. Her eyes darted to the collapsed soldier, then to Johan's hand—empty, nothing but a faint scorch mark in the sand.
Her brows knitted. "Where is it?"
"Gone," Johan said flatly. "I burned it. It could harm somone else."
Rhea's lips pressed thin. "You should've let me examine it."
Before Johan could answer, one of the guards shouted
"Look out!"
A heavy creak overhead. The water tank balanced on a wooden rig above the tents shifted, screws loosening as if unseen fingers had twisted them. The whole thing lurched, ready to crash down on her.
Rhea stunned, not in fear, but in cold calculation.
Tom's eyes widened. His chair appeared at his back in an instant. His fingers flicked. The tank split open midair, thousand of liters of water exploding toward them.
Tom didn't move. He rotated it. Yes, all of it.
The wave spun into itself, tighter and tighter, a whirlpool without a basin. His jaw clenched as the water collapsed, twisting faster, until it began to split into shimmering threads, then atom, then gone.
The air was dry again. Dust fell where water should have.
Everyone stared.
Tom breathed hard, sweat at his temple, but his face was calm. "You're welcome," he muttered.
Rhea blinked once then twice. Then her expression returned to its usual iron. She crouched by the unconscious guard. "The parasite used him as a vessel. It feeds on fear, hijacks the nerves until the body becomes nothing but a weapon. And someone here placed it."
"Someone close," Johan added. His tone carried weight, no room for doubt.
Rhea looked up, her voice sharp. "Then that means the culprit isn't out there in the sands. They're inside my camp."
Arlong shifted uneasily, glancing between tents. "What about him?" He nodded at the soldier.
"The body's clean now," Rhea said, checking the soldier's pulse. "He'll wake sore, but alive, for now."
Tom glanced at Johan, then at Rhea. "If one parasite got in…" His voice was low, steady. "How many more are waiting to hatch?"
The four of them stayed under the lamplight, the air heavy. Even the guards outside had gone silent, as if the whole camp held its breath.
Rhea folded her arms. "Parasites don't crawl across deserts on their own. They're planted by someone. That someone wanted us to be distracted or weakened."
Johan leaned on the table, eyes narrowing. "Which means someone with access. Someone very loyal, trusted."
Tom tilted his head. "So… a traitor?"
"Not necessarily," Rhea replied. "It could be a mercenary, bought from outside. But the way it latched onto the soldier's mind that takes knowledge. It was guided."
Arlong shifted the bow on his shoulder. His voice was low, but edged. "Then whoever did it is still close. Maybe even hearing this conversation."
Tom glanced around the tent, a chill crawling up his back.
Rhea finally sat, crossing one leg over the other. "There was a log two weeks ago. A man entered with clearance from the Tribunal. Said he was here to reinforce supplies. Yet.… no record of him leaving. No tracks in the sand either."
She let the silence stretch.
Johan frowned. "You didn't think that worth mentioning sooner?"
"I thought he was harmless." Her eyes darkened. "But harmless men leave the deepest wounds."
Tom exhaled slowly. He couldn't shake the feeling—whoever this "reinforcement" was, maybe they were still walking in plain sight of their steady plan.
Rhea's gaze flicked toward the tents outside. Her voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible. "If he is the one.… then he isn't working for us. He's working for the Miracle Order."
The lamp guttered. Shadows danced against the canvas walls like shapes that didn't belong to them.
The firepit outside the tent had burned down to coals. Johan sat cross-legged near it, feeding the embers with the tip of his boot.
Arlong leaned against a post, cleaning his bowstring with steady hands, and Tom lay back on the sand, staring at the canvas roof overhead.
None of them spoke for a while.
Finally, Tom broke the silence. "You think Rhea suspects us?"
Johan smirked faintly, not looking up. "She suspects everyone. That's what makes her dangerous."
Arlong grunted. "Good. A leader who doesn't question ends up buried by her own people." He tugged the bowstring one last time, satisfied with the taut sound.
Tom sighed. "Still… feels like she's hiding more than she shows. I don't like the way her eyes follow everything."
Johan gave him a sideways glance. "Then keep your head straight. If she's hiding something, it'll show itself. Secrets always rot through the skin."
That was when the first scream cut the night.
The three jumped to their feet. From the far side of the camp, a guard staggered out of his post, clutching his chest. He vomited black blood, spraying it over the sand.
Another guard collapsed. Then another.
The air turned sharp, almost metallic. A sickly mist rose from their open mouths, their veins bulging purple beneath the skin. One by one, their blood seemed to boil, fighting to escape their bodies. It tore through flesh like jagged wire, ripping skin open in long, wet cracks. The desert stank of iron.
"Virus," Johan hissed, his tone cold, clinical. "Something engineered. Not natural."
Tom backed away, covering his mouth. "What kind of virus makes blood want to leave the body?"
"It's not the blood wanting," Johan muttered. "It's the cells rejecting the host. Forced acceleration of cellular mitosis. Like… every vessel is trying to burst free at once."
The guards screamed louder. Some clawed at their own faces, trying to rip the blood out before it could tear them apart.
Arlong slammed the butt of his bow into the earth, a shimmer of blue light snapping outward. A translucent barrier spread around the three of them, locking out the haze. "Quantum barrier active. Won't hold forever."
Rhea burst up from the underground passage, hair loose around her face. The moment her eyes fell on the chaos, her composure cracked. She rushed to the nearest man, dropping to her knees in the blood-soaked sand.
Medics followed, dragging crates of supplies, but the men were already halfway gone.
One guard, younger than the rest, lay on his side, gasping. His chest rose and fell unevenly, ribs pressing sharp against skin. Rhea cradled his head with careful hands.
"Don't… don't waste on me," he choked, blood slipping from his lips. "Listen… my family…"
Her jaw tightened. "Stay still. We'll save you—"
He shook his head violently, blood splattering her cheek. "No. Promise me…. watch them. Enemies after them. Money…. hatred. My son.… he's just four months."
His breathing hitched. His eyes glazed, then snapped back with sudden clarity, desperate. "Please."
Rhea's throat tightened, but her voice came steady, hard. "I promise."
The man exhaled one final time, his body convulsing as blood burst from his pores in thin streams, soaking the sand black.
Rhea bowed her head for a second, but when she lifted it, her expression had already returned to steel. She wiped her hands on her cloak, crimson streaks running down the fabric.
She stood tall, voice cutting through the night:
"No more waiting. If we let this pass, all of us will die till tomorrow. Tonight…. we must take action."