The desert didn't sleep.
It whispered beneath the dunes, curled in the hollows of stone, and waited.
Riven Thorne rode through the silence without flinching, his dark cloak trailing behind him like smoke in the wind. The sun had dipped low enough to stain the sky bronze. Far behind, a swirl of vultures traced slow circles over the corpses they'd left behind hours ago.
Blood still clung to his armor.
Ahead, a cracked ridge jutted from the sand like a jagged scar. Riven slowed his mount at the top, scanning the expanse.
Empty. For now.
Below, his warband moved in loose formation — seven elite riders, worn and dangerous. They were used to crossing the desert with little more than instinct and silence. But tonight, even the wind tasted strange.
Riven didn't like it.
He gave a soft click of his tongue, and the horse beneath him responded, descending the slope toward camp. The others were already dismounting, moving with the practiced rhythm of survivors.
Kael, his second-in-command, was crouched near a rock shelf, unwrapping a small wound on his arm. He glanced up as Riven approached.
"Still nothing on who sent those raiders?" Kael asked, voice low.
"No banners. No emblems. Just scars and sand," Riven replied, kneeling to brush dust from his blade.
"They fought like they didn't expect to return home."
"They didn't," Riven said simply.
Kael sighed, standing. "Three attacks in two weeks. Someone's testing our movements."
"Let them," Syrina said from the edge of the circle. She was sharpening her twin blades, the soft rasp of stone against steel like a lullaby in the dark. "We haven't lost a fight yet."
Malen snorted. "Doesn't mean we're not walking into something bigger."
No one argued.
Even the fire they lit was small — hidden in a cleft between stones. Riven leaned against a boulder, one leg drawn up, gaze fixed on the canyon's mouth. Something shifted in the wind. A pressure. A murmur.
He couldn't name it. But it had been growing for days now.
Ever since that dream.
A fire. A storm. And the feeling that something—or someone—was coming.
He hadn't spoken of it.
Because Riven Thorne didn't believe in omens.
Only facts.
Only steel.
Still… he hadn't slept soundly since.
---
Later, when the wind turned cold and the stars emerged like scattered glass, the warband settled in. Syrina took first watch. Idris tended to Torren's bruised ribs. Kael leaned against a wall of sandstone, eyes half-lidded.
Riven sat alone again, staring at the blade across his knees.
It was old, forged in the southern fires and carved with symbols even he didn't understand. His father had given it to him after his first kill. It hummed faintly in the night, as if the metal could taste what was coming.
"Can't sleep?" Kael murmured, appearing beside him with a wineskin.
"I don't sleep," Riven replied.
Kael smirked. "You used to."
Riven didn't answer.
Kael offered him the wineskin anyway. Riven ignored it.
"Something's bothering you," Kael pressed. "You've been tense since the last fight. And it's not just the raiders."
Riven kept his eyes on the stars. "There's something in the wind. Can't explain it."
Kael nodded slowly. "Then don't. Instinct's enough. Always has been."
They sat in silence.
Then came the scream.
Torren's.
Riven was on his feet before the sound had finished leaving the boy's throat.
Arrows flew from the shadows. One struck the rock near Kael's head. Another embedded in Idris's thigh. Chaos erupted in an instant — blades drawn, shouts echoing off the canyon walls.
The ambush was clean. Coordinated.
Deadly.
Figures spilled from the rocks, faces wrapped in cloth, eyes glowing faintly with something wrong. Not human, not fully. Their movements were fast and unnatural — the kind of wrong that made the soul recoil.
Riven met them head-on.
Steel clashed. Sparks flew.
He moved like lightning — fluid, brutal, efficient. Every strike landed. Every dodge was deliberate. Around him, the warband fought like wolves cornered, backs to fire and grit.
But the enemy didn't flinch. Even when their limbs broke, even when their blood hit the sand, they fought like puppets pulled by a string none of them could see.
One lunged at Syrina with a blade made of bone. She spun and split his throat clean. Another went for Kael's side — blocked by Malen's spear.
Riven slammed his opponent into the canyon wall hard enough to crack stone.
And still… they kept coming.
Not for gold.
Not for land.
Just… death.
One of the masked figures paused before lunging. His mouth moved — whispering something in a tongue Riven didn't recognize. His eyes rolled back, and for one instant, the desert wind screamed like a dying thing.
Then silence.
Riven drove his sword through the man's gut.
The body crumpled. Still grinning.
He stepped back, panting, heart thudding. Dust and blood clouded the air.
By the time it was over, two of the warband were injured. Three enemies lay dead. The rest had vanished back into the dark — as if they'd never been real at all.
Kael staggered up beside him. "That was no ordinary strike."
"No," Riven said.
"Then what in the gods' name are we dealing with?"
Riven looked toward the sky. A gust of wind tugged at his cloak.
"I don't know," he said.
But the pull inside his chest — the one he'd tried to ignore — had grown stronger.
And it wasn't fear.
It was… anticipation.