Salt wind slapped the black glass reefs. Dune City hunched above, sandstone veined with obsidian, dull green glass domes, alleys sunk with bodies. Soldiers ate behind shutters. Nobles dragged trunks of coin toward cellars. The rest of the city chewed on dust.
A silhouette stood upwind. One gold-crimson eye opened in the darkness.
Every red cloak bowed. Shinshō bowed. Shinshōkan bowed.
The eye closed. The silhouette turned away.
"Okay, class," Shinshō Luna said, book tucked under her arm, ink on her fingers, smile too bright for a war. "Pop quiz."
A hairline ripple cracked her mask, older and serpent-sharp, then smoothed again.
"Question one. How many archers cannot hit what they cannot see? Ibara?"
Shinshōkan Yamanashi Ibara rolled his shoulders. White gold light licked under his skin. "All of them."
"Correct." Luna tapped her book against the wall. "Dust them blind. Then grade."
She did not look at Moro. She did not need to. "Door."
Shinshōkan Moro flexed once. Calm. Empty. "I will open it."
"On my mark," Luna said, voice sugary; then it was not. "No burning civilians. Grade the guilty."
A nod from Ibara. A blink from Moro. The Red Army sank lower on the reef shelf, breath quiet as the tide. Luna's pen scratched three neat sigils on the flap of her book.
She raised two fingers.
Mark.
The city's archers leaned out, smug behind stone.
Ibara turned his palm. Wind rose, scooped the dunes, and hurled a dust sheet up the face of the wall. Bowstrings sang blindly. He drew in the wind and let the Solar Flame bloom.
White gold. Sunspot heat.
He twisted the storm into fire columns. Tornadoes walked the parapet, and the first man they touched, he screamed. He blazed white and then fell, a black statue mid-step that shattered on the stones. Arrow slits slagged. Aura shields blistered to syrup. Helm rims flashed; eyes went white for minutes that felt like years. Three archers jumped to clear the fire. Wind flicked their feet. They missed the step and went off the wall backwards, arms pinwheeling, bodies thudding flat into the square.
Moro strolled to the foundation, dust coating his boots, and set his palm to the stone like greeting an old rival.
"Open."
"Shura Ōshin 修羅大進 - The Great Push"
It hit. Obsidian veins bulged, the wall bowed like a lung about to burst, then it did. Blocks sheared inward and exploded through the avenue. The shock threw men from the battlements. Two landed headfirst and left red fans on the paving. A third sailed into a stained glass shrine and vanished in a shower of green knives. A wagon yawned black where the rampart had been.
The Red Army flowed through. Front ranks in locked shields. Second ranks in short spears—third ranks carrying mantlets. Drum left, drum right. No chant. No roar. Just the sound of people who had decided to stop starving.
"Stack and drive," Luna said. "Turtles by twos. Hook the crenels. Sappers on the right."
Hooks flew. Ropes bit. Shield turtles heaved under boiling oil that vaporized to harmless steam as Ibara cut the heat sideways with clean wind. Mantlets kissed the next corner. A sapper team vanished under the breach lip and reappeared on the other side with a door already off its hinges.
A city captain lunged into the gap, blade high, breath sour with the power he liked too much. Moro met him with one hand to the throat. Tilted his head, as if listening.
Two fingers reached into the air.
A thin dark filament lifted from the man's chest and fought the light. The captain's face went chalk and then a wet gray. Knees knocked.
"Abyss answers," Moro said, almost bored.
The soul thread shivered, spilling confession into the heat. Doors barred. Wells locked. Rations lost. Civilians on the rubble flinched like they had been slapped.
Moro cut the thread. The body emptied without a mark. It hit the stones and twitched once, mouth working. He had already stepped through the dying breath to meet the next man.
An arrow kissed his cheekbone and drew a line of red. He did not wipe it away. He listened to the pain. He stepped into the street.
The garrison finally decided to be brave.
Shields locked, this time straight. A drum found a spine. They charged the breach they had laughed at the day before.
"Blind them again," Luna said. "Then pull the floor."
Ibara raised a ring of heat around the charge. Not a wall. A shimmer. Enough to ruin depth. He dipped the wind, and their front rank lost half a step. Their timing slurred. Red shields met them square. Steel rang. Horses panicked when white gold heat ran along their tack like spilled sunrise; handlers let go and were trampled by their own mounts. A sergeant got his sword into a Red neck. The Red dropped, fingers scrabbling, blood bubbling. His partner took the sergeant's jaw sideways with a shield edge and stamped his throat flat.
"Lane," Ibara called.
Air pressed. Fire carved a neat path along the wall and blew two defenders off their feet. A Red wedge climbed through the glow like it was a door they had been owed.
Moro went through the line like a quiet saw. Push to make a spear miss by an inch. Pull to ruin a shield bind. Lift to steal a step. His hands found what was closest and made it sing. Pike. Fallen saber. Broken paving stone. He put a spear butt through a knee, and the leg folded in a scream. He slid over the man's back and stabbed the next through the eye. A lieutenant clipped Moro's shoulder. Moro's grin flashed, quick and feral. Closer. Better. He let the next cut ride shallow so he could feel it, then elbowed the man senseless and finished him with a knife under the ear, one clean twist. Blood sheeted across Moro's forearm. He tasted iron and moved on.
From the towers, archers tried again. Ibara snapped a solar lash along the crenels. Metal ran. Hands stuck to bows, and men tore skin loose to fall away. He vented heat upward so the spill did not bake the families under the awnings. He saw a child under a stair and cut a breeze there, cool and clean, then turned the next volley aside so it feathered the stone where Luna had been.
"Left hook," Luna said. "Break the spine. Cut the head off the snake."
Red squads vanished into alleys, popped out behind a barricade, and took it from the back with short knives and no noise. A hammer team shouldered into a side gate. Hinges screamed. The bar splintered. The defending pikemen braced, then saw the second Red turtle arrive on their flank and knew, too late, that they were in a box. They fought anyway. Two Reds went down in the crush. One gargled red and blue while he tried to breathe. A defender drove a hook into a Red's mouth and tore it open to the cheek. The Red still killed him. He died with his own teeth on the stones.
In the noble quarter, trunks of gold bumped down a stair. A merchant hissed orders, spitting on the shoes of a starving woman. A Red sergeant set her spear across the stairs and shook her head. "Rations first." Ibara's wind pinned the merchant's sleeves to his own chest, gentle and unarguable. He sputtered.
Luna ghosted along the fountain rim in the main square, eyes counting, pen scratching. She snapped her book, and a sigil cage blinked into place around a barracks door. The men inside pounded uselessly like pencils on glass. She tripped over a second lattice under a sniper eave. The boards folded, and the man fell into his own trap. He hit the ground with a noise like a sack of wet wood and did not get up.
She looked over the dry basin and made a face. "Professor?"
The silhouette returned, just eyes in smoke. Two fingers moved. Old sigils burned and died.
Heat kissed cold.
Water climbed from the stone and spilled like a held breath let go.
Cups appeared out of nowhere. Hands shook. A Red private set her helmet down and turned it into a bowl for a child. The boy slurped, hiccuped, laughed at himself, and drank again.
On the stairs, an elder slid sideways, breath breaking. The eyes found him—a small red flicker at the sternum. The rattle stopped. The spine remembered itself. He stood.
No miracle pageantry. No sermon. Judgment measured and spared.
Every red cloak bowed again, this time without being told. The silhouette was already gone.
"Hydration achieved," Luna said, sunlight back in her voice. She snapped her book shut. "Back to grading. Right column press. Left column fold and knife."
Fighting stretched block to block, thin and desperate. The garrison bled courage and habit in equal measure. Red shields made alleys into throats. Ibara's wind turned corners into ambushes, then cut the fires he had made so kitchens would not catch. Moro took a spear through the sleeve and laughed, low and surprised, like someone hearing a favorite song in a stranger's cart. He dragged the owner into a wall with a pull, crushed his teeth with a knee, and then put him down forever. Blood dripped from the wall in slow, steady drops. Steam rose where it met the warm stone.
The defenders landed hits. A Red squad leader died with three bolts in his ribs, eyes open to the sky. The red squad leader bled out in the gutter with a smile and his hand still on a fallen enemy's wrist. A pikeman knelt and held a lane for four breaths, shouting for men he knew by name. Ibara saw him and gave him four clean breaths, then ended it honestly with a lance of white gold through the heart so he did not drown on the street.
Civilians watched with their whole bodies. Hands hovered over pockets, but they did not steal. A mother tore bread in half and pressed it into a Red palm without looking up. A boy with salt-ringed eyes held his cup out to the next hand in line. Men in sashes tried to shove a cart through a side gate. A Red squad lifted the cart sideways and set it in a doorway like a plug. Hinges squealed. Somewhere, a priest started to shout and then saw the water and forgot how.
By dusk, the black banners climbed the spire and caught the wind. The smell changed, becoming less of a rot and more of a steam and iron scent. Red runners chalked ration lists under the fountain. Names went next to the dead, not over them. Kitchens lit. Horses stopped screaming.
Luna stood on the breach and looked north, where the Truce Line would harden into Dust City, then farther toward Sand City, already burning.
She tucked her hair behind her ear, leaving a streak of ink. "Pop quiz over," she said. The child in her voice rang. The commander in it landed. "Midterm at Sand."
Ibara's flame ebbed to a halo. He checked his hands. Steady. "Ready."
Moro wiped the blood line from his cheek with two fingers and finally smiled like he had been understood. "I hope they hit back."
Below, Dune City did not cheer. It exhaled. Cups passed. Bread tore. Someone laughed and did not scare himself.
Night held. Steam from soup pots drifted above the square. The fountain ran like a clock that had remembered its job. Names were chalked on wet stone, dead, missing, found, with space left for the uncertain.
A hush went through the crowd before anyone saw him.
A figure stepped out of the lantern's shadow, cloak still, face lost to the hood. For a breath, a gold crimson eye opened in the dark. Red cloaks knelt. Then rose.
He did not lift his arms. He stood on the lip of the fountain and spoke as if he were telling the city what it already knew.
"Dune City."
The word settled.
"You were priced by hunger. You buried each other while men with keys argued over locks."
Two fingers touched the water. Pipes below groaned into a steadier rhythm. Somewhere deep, iron sang.
"First. Your streets. My soldiers will lift everybody before dawn. The dead will be named. None will rot alone."
A long breath left the crowd. It did not return as fear.
"Second. Your bread. The granaries open at first light. Every ration passes a red palm. If a child is missed, the rationer is done."
Hands tightened around empty bowls. Heads lifted.
"Third. Your coin." His palm opened, steady as a scale. "The old hoards are dissolved. The ledger begins tonight. Every citizen receives one thousand Tola."
Silence cracked. Then the noise. Gasps. Sobs. Laughter strangled halfway. Someone screamed Thank you into both hands. A girl dropped to her knees without meaning to, then stood, wiping her face like she had made a mistake and was allowed to fix it.
He did not smile. "You will not buy bread with hunger anymore."
His gaze slid to the lantern-rich balconies.
"Now judgment."
The nobles were still in silk. The king stood ringed by guards who had eaten while their neighbors starved, his rule nursed and shielded by the Seeker Association while he starved his own island. He tried to speak. The square no longer cared about his words.
Red cloaks moved without hurry. Doors that had never opened to anyone poor opened. The king's guard drew on habit. They were disarmed, just as you remove a splinter. One guard lost three fingers to Luna's pen blade before he understood he had been cut. He stared at his hand and howled. Moro put him under the world with a heel.
The nobles came out blinking into torchlight, hands bound, fat rings, soft mouths, eyes that still thought they could buy a different ending. The king lifted his chin by habit. The crowd did not look at his face. They looked at his hands.
"Crimes?" the cloaked figure asked, not loud.
Voices answered from everywhere at once. "Wells locked." "Rations lost." "Beatings for the soup line." "Sold our daughters." "Took our sons for a wall that fell in an hour." "Buried the sick in the dark."
He listened like a cliff listens to the sea.
"No spectacle," Luna said softly. "Finish."
Red blades flashed. Not once. Many times. Clean work, necks, and hearts. One noble tried to run and slipped in someone else's blood. He hit the cobbles on his cheek and mewled. A Red lifted his hair and cut him open ear to ear. The king stood until the last possible moment. He watched his men die. He watched his rings shake. He opened his mouth to bless himself. Moro stepped in and drove the knife up under the jaw and into the brain. The king's eyes widened and then looked far away. Blood ran in a hot sheet. It pattered into the fountain and turned the edge of the water pink. The crowd did not gasp. They watched.
For a heartbeat, the square was stone still. Then it erupted. Roars. Sobs. Hands in the air. "Prophet," someone shouted. "Savior." "Judgment." The chant chewed itself into one loud truth. We are free. Men pressed their foreheads to the cobbles. Women touched the lip of the fountain and wept. Old soldiers stood straighter. Boys not yet shaved and men thick with years shouted the same thing. Let me serve. Take me. I am yours. Prayers rose from a dozen throats, then dozens more. Relief is needed somewhere to live.
He let it crest and pass. He waited with the patience of a blade laid on a table.
"Repairs begin now," he said when silence found them. "Walls first. Well's second. Roads third."
He did not look back, but Ibara was already walking, the wind drawing trash and dust into neat rows; the heat had softened to a gentle warmth by the kitchen doors, allowing the ovens to work. On the broken rampart, Moro lifted stones like they were choices and built a new step into the breach he had made. Red runners ghosted out with ledgers and chalk. Names went down. Coin rolls went out. Calloused palms closed on the weight they had not felt in years. Hammers started in the middle distance, shy at first and then sure. People brought their own hammers. Someone brought nails. Someone else brought soup.
"If you will not live under this law," he added, steady, not angry, "you may leave. At first light, the gates open. No levy. Take what you can carry. No one will be struck for walking away."
A ripple of surprise. A long look in doorways. Some relief. Some shame. Some calculations with nowhere to land. A man squeezed his wife's shoulder. She nodded. Stay. An old merchant stared at the street, then at his hands, then at the hooks where ledgers had hung. He chose to go and was not punished for it. It startled him into tears.
The figure held his palm over the water one last time. The surface took on a gold sheen, just for a breath, like a coin turned in sunlight.
"This city's name died tonight with the men who sold it," he said. "Rise under a new one."
He looked out over the bowls, bandages, and black glass dust on everyone's shoes.
"From this hour, you are the Golden City in the Sands."
He let it find every ear.
"The Golden City."
The name moved through them like heat from a hearth, faces lifting, shoulders uncurling, a hundred tiny nods that added up to something you could build on. Hammers quickened. Laughter spiked and settled into work. The fountain kept time. Red cloaks carried bodies with their names, not their smells.
He stepped down into the press. Hands reached. He touched a wrist, a shoulder, a brow, not lingering, leaving steadiness behind like a thumbprint in wet clay.
Above, someone pulled down the last noble banner. It fell without a sound. The blood on the stones shone dull in the lantern light. Steam drifted from the soup pots. The sea wind smelled like salt and iron.