Sand found his mouth first.
Grit packed his gums, stuck under his tongue, scraped when he swallowed. Heat clung to it like it had been baking all day, but the air that hit his face was cold enough to make his eyes water.
Aydin coughed. Sand puffed out of him like he was a broken hourglass.
His hands flailed for purchase and met more sand. He pushed up, half-buried, half-cradled, like the world had tried to swallow him and gotten distracted halfway through.
Screaming.
Not one voice. Many. A chorus of panic, sharp enough to cut through the ringing in his ears.
He blinked hard. The sky was wrong, too pale, the light slanted strange, like the sun did not quite know where it belonged.
A temple sat ahead, hunched and dark, and a shimmer traced a circle around it and the first row of homes like a bubble half-dead.
The barrier was not quiet. It made a high, strained whine, like glass under pressure.
Dust lifted along its edge in a thin halo and hung there, refusing to fall. The wardstone set into the temple steps glowed through the smoke, turning faces near it a sickly pale-blue.
Aydin felt it in his teeth, a low vibration through the sand, deep enough to rattle his molars.
Okay.
Inventory.
Limbs, check. Pain, yes, but nothing screaming broken.
Breath, shaky but there. His heart was a fist in his ribs, doing the kind of fast work it only did when he had been running too long or afraid too hard.
He sat up and immediately regretted it. The world tilted, and the screaming doubled, like his brain could not decide which direction the danger was in so it picked all of them.
Aydin spat sand again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and tasted blood and salt.
"This is… new," he managed, because his mouth insisted on being honest even when his mind wanted to be quiet.
The sand around his legs shifted.
It moved with purpose, grains sliding as if the ground had a current underneath. The pull went toward the temple ring, toward the ward glow, toward whatever was making that whining strain.
A shadow passed over him.
He looked up fast, expecting a cloud.
There were no clouds. Just torchlight, smoke, and something huge sliding between lantern glow and sand-strewn street, blotting out light as it moved.
Aydin scrambled to his feet, sand sliding off his clothes. He was wearing rough fabric with stiff seams, a belt that was not his, boots broken-in by someone else's life.
People poured past him.
Panicked bodies, elbows, breath, grit. He became a rock in a river.
One man sprinted by, tripped, skinned his palms, and kept going without looking back.
A child screamed one word over and over.
"Breach!"
Aydin's body decided something before his mind caught up.
It wanted to run.
Away from the screams. Away from the temple ring. Away from whatever was painting shadows on sand.
He turned. Half a step.
His feet found the emptier street on instinct.
Then a different sound cut through the chaos.
Not a scream. A sob.
Thin and raw.
And the image hit him so hard it stole his breath. Not this place, but a doorway.
His mother's voice, soft but firm, calling him the way she did when he tracked sand into the house.
Aydin habibi, shoes.
A second memory followed, uninvited. The call to prayer rolling over rooftops at dusk.
The way the world always seemed to pause for a breath when that voice rose, even if nobody admitted they were listening.
His sister's hair smelling like cheap shampoo and sun, her laugh sharp as a thrown pebble.
What if it is her.
What if she is calling and nobody goes.
His feet stopped. His heart stumbled.
Then he pivoted so fast his ankle barked.
"Great," he panted, already running, "new life, same sprinting."
He shoved into the flow of people, heading toward the thickest noise.
"Sorry, sorry," he said, because bodies bumped and shoulders clipped and elbows caught him, and apologizing was easier than explaining he did not know where he was but he was going anyway.
"Sorry, I know, just let me, please."
The closer he got, the more the air tasted like metal and burned salt.
Smoke stung his eyes. Something snapped ahead, a hard crack like timber giving up.
The ward ring's whine sharpened.
It rose in pitch, then dipped, then rose again, as if the Veil was breathing through pain.
Aydin hit a knot of panic.
People jammed between buildings, trying to funnel toward the barrier, toward the temple, toward safety that was visibly struggling.
A body hit the sand in front of him.
An older woman. Grey hair half-braided, scarf ripped loose, hands flailing in the grit.
She went down hard and vanished beneath knees and boots.
People stepped over her like she had become part of the street.
Aydin stopped.
His brain screamed at him to keep moving, to not be the idiot who dies because he wanted to be kind.
He ignored it.
He crouched, shoved hands through the stampede, took a boot to the shoulder, and got his fingers under her arm.
"Hey," he said, voice too loud because adrenaline makes everything loud. "Hey. Look at me. You're good. You're up. Move."
She was heavy.
Dead weight. Shock weight.
He hauled anyway.
His legs burned. His shoulder screamed.
He got her up to her feet and felt her sway like a tree in wind.
Her eyes were unfocused. Her mouth worked around silent words.
She tried to breathe and could not.
"It's okay," he lied, because what else do you say in the middle of a breach. "You're up, that's the hard part."
The woman's gaze snapped over his shoulder.
Her pupils went huge.
The vibration under Aydin's boots deepened, hungry and close, as if something massive was sliding beneath the world.
His teeth ached again.
Then he heard it.
A growl so big it did not sound like a throat.
It sounded like stone grinding on stone.
"No pressure," he muttered, because his mouth had opinions. "Hero moment, sure."
He turned.
The ground ahead of the temple ruptured like water breaking.
Sand exploded upward in a geyser.
Debris followed, chunks of stone and splintered boards thrown aside like toys.
Something rose through it, not climbing, not stepping, but surfacing as if the earth was a river and it was built to swim it.
A Riftbasilisk demon.
Legless.
A giant serpent, thick as a cart and longer than the street was wide, coils rolling over themselves as it poured out of the breach vent it had made.
Its hide was deep imperial purple, marbled with shadow bands that made it look like night had been poured into skin.
Crystals studded it.
Jagged yellow and blue growths embedded along its spine and cheek ridges.
They caught torchlight and threw it back in sharp shards.
They looked like someone had hammered gemstones into living flesh and the flesh had decided to keep them.
Its tail lifted.
Not tapering, not sleek.
A thick, segmented scorpion-like tail curled high over its back, ending in a barbed stinger big enough to punch through a door.
The Riftbasilisk slid toward the ward ring and pressed its crystal-studded jaw against the barrier.
The Veil reacted like a struck drum.
The whine spiked. Dust at the boundary jumped and hung higher.
Hair on the arms of the nearest people stood up, and a few of them flinched back like the air itself had slapped them.
The wardstone on the temple steps flared brighter.
A faint crackline lit inside it, then dimmed.
The crowd screamed louder.
Aydin's skin went cold.
That ring was the only thing between "town" and "meat," and the demon was testing it like it had time.
The Riftbasilisk pulled back, inhaled, and the crystals along its face glinted under sand-dust.
It sniffed.
Like it could smell mana and fear.
Then its head swung away from the barrier, slow and certain, toward the densest knot of running bodies.
Toward the people.
Toward him.
Aydin shoved the woman behind him as gently as he could manage.
"Run," he said, pointing with a shaking hand. "Go to the temple. Go now."
She stumbled, caught herself, and vanished into the flood.
Aydin stood there for one stupid heartbeat with nothing in his hands and sand under his boots and a demon about to turn the street into a slaughterhouse.
His body made a decision without asking permission.
His hands lifted. Elbows bent. Palms up, like he was about to catch something falling.
He flinched and shoved forward.
The sand in front of him surged.
It rose like it got yanked on strings.
A wall slammed up out of the street, rough and ugly, a slab of packed sand that should not have held shape at all but did.
It formed between the Riftbasilisk and the running crowd like the world had decided to help him at the last second.
Aydin stared at it, mouth open.
Then the Riftbasilisk hit it.
Impact thundered through sand and bone.
The barrier bowed inward.
Grains blasted out in a choking fog.
Aydin felt the force in his arms as if the demon had smashed him directly.
The wall held.
For a beat.
Then it started to collapse, sand pouring down like a curtain.
Aydin's hands jerked up again.
"Okay, okay, okay," he gasped. "Do it again, do it again."
The same wall slammed up again, overlapping the first, thicker by accident, not by skill.
He was not shaping it.
He was begging it into existence with his whole body.
His fingers cramped hard, a sudden clawing pain that shot up his forearms.
He bit down so he would not yelp, tasted copper again, and kept his hands up anyway.
The Riftbasilisk slammed again, and the wall shook like it wanted to turn back into a dune.
Somewhere in the crush of sound a voice screamed, "Wardkeeper!"
Another voice answered, raw with terror, "Stone-lit, hold!"
Aydin swallowed grit, blinked hard, and kept the barrier between teeth and people.
The ward ring's whine dipped so low it turned into a growl of its own.
For a heartbeat the dust along the boundary sagged like gravity remembered it existed.
A ward bell clanged once, sharp and desperate.
Then a stone crack popped from the temple steps like a snapped bone.
Someone screamed, "Rim-Mother spare us!"
The Riftbasilisk's yellow-blue crystals brightened.
Not all at once.
In sequence.
Yellow then blue, yellow then blue, climbing in a ladder up its face like a heartbeat pattern that did not belong to anything alive.
Aydin's stomach dropped.
"Sorry," he whispered to nobody. "Sorry, sorry, I know, just let me…"
He threw his hands up again for another wall, faster, desperate to beat whatever that glow meant.
The sand heaved.
It rose before his palms finished the motion.
Like it was eager.
Like it was waiting for permission and got tired of waiting.
Aydin's breath hitched.
The sand was not just obeying.
It was responding.
The Riftbasilisk's crystals pulsed once, tight and bright.
The air in front of its mouth rippled, and a translucent second jaw snapped into being.
It lunged past the wall and bit down on empty air a handspan from Aydin's face, close enough that the cold of it kissed his skin.
Aydin flinched so hard his neck cracked.
The phantom jaw hit the sand wall and the wall answered like it could.
Grains burst outward in a hard, glittering spray, not pushed aside so much as shaved away.
The projection did not bite through like a real mouth, it dragged through, chewing a pale groove in the sand that immediately tried to collapse behind it.
For a fraction of a second the translucent teeth fuzzed at the edges, like the wall had made the magic stutter.
That fraction was everything.
If he had stayed, he would be missing a face.
Aydin hopped sideways on pure panic, boots skidding, shoulder slamming a post.
The spectral bite snapped shut where his face had been, close enough that the cold of it kissed his cheek and stole the air from his lungs.
The air snapped back with a sound like wet cloth torn in half.
Behind him, someone screamed again, higher, sharper, and the sound ended too suddenly, like a hand had clamped over a mouth.
Aydin's stomach rolled. He tasted bile.
He did not blink.
He threw his hands up anyway.
The sand heaved, same ugly slab, same crude wall, like his body only knew one word and it kept shouting it at the world.
The Riftbasilisk hissed, and the sound came through the street in a vibrating ribbon that made the dust dance.
Its coils rolled forward, smooth and heavy, and it drove its head into the sand barrier again with a patience that felt worse than rage.
Impact.
The wall bowed inward.
Sand burst in Aydin's eyes and mouth.
He coughed grit and kept his palms up.
"Hold," he gasped, to the wall, to the sand, to himself, to God, to anyone listening. "Please. Hold."
The wall held for half a heartbeat.
Then it collapsed like a tide breaking.
Aydin jerked his hands higher, almost slapping himself in the face with panic.
The same wall slammed up again, overlapping the first.
It was thicker by accident, because his arms shook and the sand came in sloppy.
It bought him another second.
The Riftbasilisk's tail rose behind its coils, segmented rings catching torchlight.
The barbed stinger hovered, perfectly still, like it was thinking.
Aydin did not like the way it waited.
The stinger struck.
It punched through the sand wall with whip speed, a clean puncture that tore a hole the size of Aydin's fist.
The stinger's shadow crossed his throat.
Grains sprayed in a hard line.
The stinger withdrew, and the puncture sagged, widening, as if the sand had forgotten how to be solid.
Aydin's breath hitched.
Venom, his brain supplied, with no evidence except the way his skin crawled.
He threw another wall up, frantic, trying to seal the hole.
The wall formed, rough and shuddering, but the sand did not settle right.
It slumped.
It kept sliding, like his command was getting tired.
His fingers cramped again, harder this time, and the cramp did not leave.
It spread up his wrists, a hot clawing ache that turned into something else.
Numbness.
It washed over his hands like he had plunged them into winter water.
"No," he breathed, because that was a stupid word to say to a thing that did not care, but it came out anyway.
He flexed his fingers.
They did not feel like his.
His fingers felt borrowed.
He pinched his thumb and felt nothing.
The ward ring whined, higher and thinner, and then dipped.
Low enough that the sound became a growl that matched the Riftbasilisk's.
The dust halo along the barrier sagged again.
For a heartbeat it fell, then jerked back up, as if the Veil remembered it had a job.
On the temple steps, the wardstone flared pale-blue.
That crackline inside it lit again, longer now, spidering fast through the glow.
Aydin saw it and did not understand it, but every part of him understood breaking.
"Wardkeeper!" someone shouted, raw and pleading.
A bell clanged twice in fast succession.
Not ceremonial. Not measured.
A warning hammered into metal.
The Riftbasilisk lifted its head.
It did not look at the wardstone.
It did not look at the Veil.
It looked past the barrier, toward the people packed behind it.
His tongue went thick again.
He kept his eyes on the serpent anyway.
Its crystals brightened again.
Yellow then blue.
Yellow then blue.
A ladder of light climbing its face in that heartbeat pattern that did not belong to anything alive.
Aydin's mouth tasted copper.
His hands felt like dead weight at the end of his arms.
He threw them up anyway.
"Sorry," he whispered, because his brain latched onto the only thing it knew how to give in a crowd. "Sorry, sorry, please, just…"
He pushed.
Nothing.
"Of course."
A few grains lifted.
Not a wall.
Not even a sheet.
Just a weak flutter, like sand startled by a sigh.
Aydin stared at his hands.
He pushed again, harder, like force could replace whatever he had just lost.
The sand answered with a pathetic twitch.
His forearms burned.
His fingers did not.
The Riftbasilisk's crystals pulsed once, tight and bright.
The air in front of its mouth rippled.
The translucent jaw snapped into being again, wider this time.
It opened past the collapsing curtain of sand, already sliding through the groove it had carved.
Aydin's breath went thin.
His hands hung in front of him, useless, shaking.
The phantom bite came for his face.