The wind howled through the canyon, a raw, hungry sound against the cooling rock. Markus and Breon trudged onward, sweat drying to salt crusts in the scorching dusk as the last faint Demana sign vanished behind them. The desert ahead offered no comfort or direction—only endless stretches of sand-strewn rock, jagged cliffs piercing the sky, and a few brittle clouds clinging desperately to the day's fading warmth.

“They don’t mark the path like a road,” Breon muttered, wiping gritty dust from his brow. “Only symbols enough to say, ‘You might not die if you go this way.’”

Markus managed only a dry grunt that might have been a chuckle, conserving what little breath he had. His strength was failing. Earlier, while climbing the crags, he'd slipped and gouged his thigh deeply on a jagged rock. Though he'd bandaged it carefully, the wound had reopened during their descent. Since then, he'd grown increasingly quiet—each step more labored, each breath more deliberate as the wound pulsed with pain.

Then they came.

At first, dark shapes melting between distant ridge lines, fluid as poured ink. Then, low snarls drifted on the wind, punctuated by sharp, eager yips—a pack.

They materialized from the deepening dusk like shadows given teeth and claws—lean, bristling creatures with cracked, splayed paws and yellowed fangs bared in perpetual hunger—desert carrion dogs, creatures half-myth and all menace.

Seven.

No—eight.

Eyes gleaming with feral light.

Breon’s sword hissed from its sheath.

“Behind me,” he growled, planting himself before Markus.

Markus barely had his blade raised when the first dog lunged. Fangs snapped inches from his face—a blur of mangy fur and malice—before Breon's swift stroke opened the beast's throat with a wet cough.

Then chaos erupted.

A whirlwind of snarls, scrabbling claws, kicked-up sand, and the copper tang of blood.

Breon moved like a man fighting fire in close quarters, blade a flickering arc—hacking, ducking, spinning against the snapping jaws.

Markus stumbled, falling to one knee. A second beast clamped onto his sword hand, teeth grinding. Pain lanced up his arm as the alpha of the pack—larger, muzzle greyed, hide crosshatched with old battle scars—ignored Breon and launched itself toward Markus’s exposed throat.

Breon cried out—a raw sound of denial—too far, too slow to intercept.

But the fangs never found flesh.

Instead, a sickening crack—a blur faster than thought.

The alpha dog collapsed mid-air, landing in a twitching heap, a crudely fashioned spear of bone and chipped flint driven clean through its ribs.

She stood over the dog.

Naked and still amidst the violence. Scarred skin seemed to drink the dim light, slicked here and there with dark blood that wasn't entirely hers. Black veins pulsed beneath her flesh, a faint, disturbing network of violet light. Her dark hair was a matted tangle of sand and gore. Her body, lean and hard, was a canvas of ritualistic symbols carved by tooth and toxin.

Her eyes—twin wells of violet flame—fixed on the dying alpha at her feet. No pity. No malice. Only an unwavering, absolute will.

She spoke then, voice low and resonant, yet carrying over the snarls—the words not Demana, nor any tongue Breon knew, but something older, harsher, as if chiseled from the world's first bones.

Breon didn’t understand the meaning. But he felt the power in them—like heat crawling up his spine, raising the hairs on his neck.

The remaining dogs froze, whining low in their throats. Ears flattened. Tails tucked low. Then, as one, they dropped their heads, bellies pressed to the sand. Not cowering in fear. Submitting in recognition.

A tense moment stretched, the desert wind the only sound besides the dying alpha's ragged breaths.

The strange spell held until something large stirred on the ridge behind them—the scrape and drag of heavy claws on stone, echoing in the canyon. With a yowl, the pack broke, vanishing into the encroaching dark like smoke unraveling in the wind.

Breon staggered toward Markus, sword hanging forgotten in his grip, eyes wide. “Sela…?”

She ignored him.

Stepping over the still-writhing dog, she knelt beside Markus.

Strange, guttural syllables murmured from her lips as she pressed a hand flat against his chest. The purple fire pulsing faintly in her veins seemed to gather, flowing like a tide through her palm and into Markus. Not closing the wound, but somehow… holding him together, staving off the inevitable.

Breon watched, stunned into silence. It was Sela, yet it wasn't. The transformation was terrifying, profound.

She finally looked up at him, her violet gaze passing over him without a flicker of familiarity. There was only a deep, unnerving patience in her eyes as if she were waiting for him to understand something vital, something long forgotten.

A low rumble vibrated through the stone. Then, cresting the nearby ridge, a great lizard-like creature appeared, scaled in patterns of sand and shadow. Ponderous and slow, it was easily the size of a sturdy horse.

She rose, lifting Markus’s dead weight with ease, and secured him onto the creature’s broad, scaly back. Then she retrieved her spear from the dead alpha and turned to Breon. She pointed the spear, not in threat, an instruction, toward a wide track of sand at the bottom of a ravine.

She rasped out a word—guttural and hollow—"Demana."

Before Breon could fully grasp her meaning, she mounted the great beast behind Markus.

With a soft click of her tongue, the creature wheeled and loped away across the sand, its swift gait carrying them into the darkness and leaving Breon standing, bleeding and shaken, staring into the darkness where she had vanished.

What in all the gods' broken teeth just happened?

The cave was cool and deep within the rock—its entrance hidden behind a wall of tumbled stone and sand-worn brush, a pocket of breath in the unbreathing waste. The cave seemed to stir with a quiet tide of strange and eternal life. A slow fire crackled low in the center, its smoke rising straight and thin through a narrow crevice above. Water pooled in the corner, rising silently from the depths below.

Markus lay on a bed of dry brush, his tunic folded beneath his head, one weakened hand clenched at his side. His throat was wrapped in tight, dark bandages, soaked through once and replaced. His bleeding had slowed, but he trembled—weak, tired, but no longer afraid, as if some deeper current had steadied him.

The figure sat cross-legged beside him.

She was half-shadow, her long limbs painted with ash and dried streaks of blood. Her eyes flickered violet in the firelight—each one glowing like the last ember of a dying star.

The ceiling above glimmered—not with stars but with pale-bodied insects no larger than a fingernail. They wandered in endless, meandering paths, their soft luminescence casting a living constellation that shimmered and shifted across the stone above.

Markus stirred and tried to speak. A rasp of broken air escaped him—half growl, half breath. She touched his brow with cool fingers, easing his head back down upon the bed. A soft, rasping sound emerged from her as she urged him to rest.

He blinked. A flicker of recognition passed through him. She looked away. Uncomfortable.

She reached for a rag, dipped it in tincture, and wrung it out before wiping his face. He coughed—his body jerking with sudden pain that shot up his throat. She steadied him, pressing her palm flat against his chest.

Their eyes met, his breath catching sharply as her otherworldly violet glow sent a shudder through his body.

You burned a world to save me," she whispered, her voice a distant echo, ancient and cold.

"But I was never yours to save."

Markus trembled again, his lips struggling to form her name. Her gaze lifted to the ceiling, watching the luminous insects crawl across the rock in their silent, endless orbits.

"Did you think I would not ascend?"

The cloth slipped from her hand as she laid her palms against his ribs, feeling the uneven rhythm of his breath.

"That my world burns quietly?"

The fire flickered, casting deeper shadows across the stone as silence settled around them. She bowed her head to his, touching forehead to temple, her lips close to his ear.

"This fire is not suffering," she rasped, her voice broken yet vast.

"It is memory."

She sat upright, eyes closed, motionless as an idol carved from stone.

Above her, the pale light danced on, insect stars spinning their endless orbit through the darkness.

"And I remember everything."

He shuddered once more—a final tremor—and the world faded like an ebbing tide, pulling him into sleep.