Charles Mansour staggered over the blistering dunes, dragging a leg slick with dark crimson. Each step stabbed through his thigh, but he forced himself forward, muscles quivering, lungs ragged. The sun burned his back, turning his cloak into a molten shroud. Wind flung sand into his eyes, nose, and mouth, stinging like fire, while thirst gnawed at his belly, sharp and unyielding. Behind him, the rhythmic pounding of footsteps pressed fear into his chest. He dared not glance back—not yet.
The Dwarf Free City lay far, impossibly distant. The desert was a predator, patient and merciless. Orsen's words whispered in his mind: "If the world turns on you… run west. There, no one cares who you were. Start again."
"Should've picked a quicker death," he rasped, every word a rasping rasp of despair. Doubt flared, venomous, but he shoved it aside. Each agonizing step became a defiance, a silent vow to survive.
---
Pain was a voice, not a master. Orsen had drilled it into him. Every faltering step reminded him: listen, anticipate, endure. Agony sharpened him—it did not break him, though his body screamed otherwise.
Once, he had been a child, defenseless, alone. His mother, a human warrior captured in battle, had been claimed by the Panther Tribe. Beautiful, proud, defiant—and the chief wanted her broken. She resisted. She lost. Her only child inherited her defiance, though the tribe called it weakness.
No ears, no tail—just pale skin, wild black hair, sharp teeth, and eyes like a panther's. His father saw him not as a son, but a creature to mold, a test to torment.
Memories of chains, pens, and shadows haunted him. The smell of his mother—smoke, sweat, faint iron—twisted grief through him, sharp and piercing. He clenched his teeth and refused to falter.
Orsen had found him broken but cunning beyond his years. He taught survival, strategy, patience, and preemptive cruelty. "Strike when they don't expect it. Think before you swing. Your body is a weapon, but your mind must be sharper."
By sixteen, he was wiry, fast, strong—but haunted. Shadow, the chief's chosen heir, humiliated him daily. He endured. Until the day everything changed.
Orsen fell ill. The tribe refused medicine. Charles buried him beside his mother, fists clenched, eyes hollow. Rage simmered beneath grief and helplessness. Orsen's final words burned in his memory:
"Be patient. Don't make trouble. But if things turn bad… run. Run west. Find the Dwarf Free City. Survive, Charles. Survive, and the rest you can take when you're ready."
Shadow came for him, sneering, striking. For the first time, Charles did not hold back. Stone in hand, he ended Shadow in a blur of bone and blood. Cold satisfaction mingled with fear. Him or me. He chose himself.
---
Charles fled, taking Shadow's enchanted daggers and the gold ring with the Panther crest. That theft marked him for death. Mercenaries, bounty hunters, slavers—all came. He learned to kill, vanish, survive. Every desert step reminded him of Orsen's lessons: anticipate, adapt, endure.
Four black silhouettes rose over the dunes. Orcs. Veterans, not thugs. Their presence pressed the air like iron. Dread ran down his spine. Death might have been mercy.
He climbed a dune, vanished behind its crest, and buried himself in sand and dry brush. Heart hammering, breath ragged, muscles trembling. Each inhale carried dust, sweat, and the acrid tang of blood. A fleeting thought whispered: maybe I'm done for. He shook it off. Focus. Precision. Survival.
---
The orcs crested the dune, tusks glinting, armor catching the dying sunlight. Orok, broad-shouldered and scarred, carried a two-handed blade, moving like a predator. Charles' pulse spiked. Panic flared—but he funneled it into razor-sharp clarity.
He lunged first. A dagger sliced across the nearest orc's throat, slick crimson spraying over the sand. Another lunged—he rolled sideways, kicking up sand to blind it, then jabbed a dagger into its knee. The roar that followed was deafening, mingling with his own ragged breathing.
The desert became a weapon. He kicked a patch of loose dune under another orc's feet; it toppled, legs trapped in soft sand. Another lunged—Charles pivoted, grabbed a jagged stone, and slammed it into the creature's temple. Pain stabbed his shoulder and thigh, but adrenaline drowned it out. Every strike was deliberate. Every move precise.
Orok roared and charged. Charles ducked behind a jagged rock, sand flying. He stabbed at Orok's legs, feinted with one dagger, and drove the other into the orc's ribs. Orok stumbled, swinging wildly. Charles rolled, using the terrain, every dune and shadow a shield.
The final orc hesitated. Charles limped closer, voice like gravel:
"If you want to live, drop your weapons and run. Tell the chief… I'm coming for his head."
The orc bolted, legs pumping, disappearing into the dunes. Charles did not chase. He could not.
---
He collapsed against a jagged rock. Vision swimming, chest heaving, limbs trembling. Pain roared, but life roared louder. Each breath carried grief, rage, fear, and determination. Memories became weapons: nights in pens, Orsen teaching him to read shadows and heartbeats, to anticipate. Anger and sorrow fused with survival instinct.
By nightfall, a fire smoldered, half-cauterizing wounds. Sand clung to him, mixing with sweat, dust, and streaks of blood. Chased, hunted, broken, yet alive.
"Remember, Charles," Orsen had said, "it's not just survival. It's control. Own the fight, or it owns you. And when you run, don't just run. Run to a place where they can't find you. Build from nothing. Become what you choose."
The Dwarf Free City. Survival, anonymity, a chance to start again. He had to reach it.
A chill crawled down his spine. A blade pressed cold and sharp against the nape of his neck. Muscles froze, nerves screamed. A voice, rough and commanding, hissed near his ear:
"Look at that… what the sands dragged to my doorstep."
Charles stiffened. Heart hammering, body trembling—not just from exhaustion, but from immediate, lethal threat. Fear, rage, and grim determination surged together. Not again.