The desert woke before the people did.
Eryndor was already up, hands raw from knotting net cord, when the first heat bled into the sky. The morning wind came off the shallows smelling of brine and sun-baked rope. He worked by habit—loop, pull, bite the twine—glancing now and then toward the horizon, where dunes rose like the backs of sleeping beasts.
"Stop biting the cord," his mother said, not looking up from the basket she was mending. "You'll ruin your teeth and my nets."
Eryn spat a sliver of hemp into the sand. "Then buy me better cord."
"Buy me a better son," she shot back, smiling.
He grinned and kept working. The village still wore its night—shadows long, doors shut, only the gulls awake enough to argue. Farther down the beach, Lako chased a goat that refused to admit it was tethered. Eryn whistled, sharp. The goat paused, blinked, and turned docile as a caught thief. Lako whooped like Eryn had wrangled a storm.
"You do that too easily," his mother murmured.
"It's a goat."
"It's also stubborn," she said. "Like you. Like your father." She tied off the basket, then adjusted the pendant at her throat—a simple coin of dull metal on an old leather cord. It flashed, just for a breath, with a light that didn't belong to the sun.
"You always touch that when you lie," Eryn said.
"And when I tell the truth," she replied. "Fetch water."
They moved through the village as shutters opened and voices rose. Old Kesa was already bargaining over dried fish with a traveler whose camel looked more offended than tired. Children ran in a pack, past a chalk-stained wall where someone had scrawled an old sigil—three crescents nested inside a jagged ring. Eryn's eyes snagged on it. A faint pressure filled his ears, a hum barely there. He blinked, and it was gone.
At the well, he hauled up a bucket. The water came clear and cold; he splashed his face and hissed at the shock.
"Festival tonight," Kesa called, counting coins twice. "Don't run off to the dunes."
"I never run off," Eryn said.
"You're running off now," his mother said, taking the bucket as she passed.
He followed, half a step behind. "Do we have enough for the pot?"
"We have enough. And if we don't, you'll charm the goat again."
He laughed, then noticed the deeper lines around her eyes. "You sleep?"
"Enough." She paused, basket on her hip. "If the air ever hums loud, Eryn—"
"What?"
"Run," she said lightly, hiding steel in her voice. "Some storms are bigger than our roofs."
He nodded and stole the basket from her just to make her chase him—which she didn't, because she let him win small wars.
By midmorning, the village argued over the price of salt and whether the fish had been caught or persuaded ashore. Eryn fixed a cracked oar for a man who paid him in dates and gossip.
"They say the barrier sang last night. Day of the Veil's coming early," the man said.
"Barriers don't sing."
"Everything sings if you're tired enough," the man replied, shuffling away.
Eryn brought the dates to his mother. She kept three and handed him the rest. "Share before you eat them all."
He walked the rim of the shallows, tossing dates to children who pretended not to care. The hum returned and faded like a dream's heartbeat. He almost asked his mother—but she'd tell him to stop naming shadows.
By afternoon, the village rehearsed its joy—strings tuned, ribbons braided, a bent drum hammered back into shape. Eryn and his mother strung lanterns across the square: paper spheres painted with suns and waves. A traveler with a cracked lute played a melancholy tune that refused to be cheerful.
"You'll dance?" she asked.
"I'll try."
"You'll fail," she corrected. "But you'll try."
That won him a laugh. They tied the last lantern. The square looked almost grand. Smoke curled up from the cookfires.
At dusk, children paraded around the shrine stone, now chalked with fresh symbols. The strange sigil had been circled with flowers. Eryn caught his mother watching it with a fleeting frown.
"You never told me who drew that," he said.
"Someone with chalk. Help Kesa with the stew."
He carried a pot that should have taken two men. Kesa wagged her eyebrows. "Useful after all."
"Useful," Eryn said, "and hungry."
"Useful first. Hungry later."
Music rose, and the village made itself larger than life for a little while. Eryn danced badly and laughed at himself. His mother clapped in rhythm, eyes on the men who drank too fast. The hum was louder now—no, closer. Like something beyond the ridge inhaled when the village exhaled.
He looked toward the dunes.
For a heartbeat, he saw something tall and thin where only sky should be—a pillar cut from night, edges wrong. He blinked, and it was gone.
The wind stopped.
Music faltered, then died. Someone laughed the wrong kind of laugh. Cookfire smoke froze in place.
"Inside," his mother said softly.
"Ma—"
"Inside," she repeated, taking his elbow.
They'd barely reached their door when torches flared across the square. Ten in all. The men holding them weren't clad in cloth-black, but the lightless black of wet stone. Their armor drank the lantern glow. They moved with inhuman precision. The Obsidian Pact.
A spear punched through wood. No cry, just the wrong sound of weight gone wrong.
His mother shoved him toward the storage pit beneath the floor. "Don't make a sound."
"Ma—" His voice cracked.
She pressed the pendant into his palm. Etched arcs caught light where there wasn't any. "If you hear the hum grow loud, run. Run until your feet forget you."
"I'm not leaving—"
"You are," she said, with a ferocity that made his protests small. "You are my stubborn boy and you will run, and you will live long enough for me to smack you later. Go."
Footsteps. A shadow at the window. Eryn slid into the dark. Her hands lingered a moment, then left. The quiet of someone picking up a knife because empty hands are worse.
The Pact didn't knock. They entered. Boots black as resin left no sand. A cold-iron scent filled the air.
Her voice was steady: "You're lost. This isn't a road."
No answer. A hum—wrong—and a thud. Eryn bit his knuckle. He didn't move.
Through a crack, he saw a cloak dark enough to eat the room. The figure tilted its head, listening to something beside his ear. It turned toward him, then away. "Not yet," some calculus decided.
"Burn it," a voice said. The hum faded.
Her breath caught. Then the scrape of wood. The sound of fire asked to work.
Heat pressed his face. He ran because she had told him to.
Through smoke and light, past bodies he refused to see, past Lako—or someone chalk-white like him—past Kesa's burst jars. The hum rose and fell. He clawed up a dune, slid down, ran again. Behind him, the village made sounds villages shouldn't make.
A whisper came between heartbeats. Not words at first. A shape.
He clutched the pendant until it bit crescent moons into his palm.
"Don't," he said—to it, himself, or the dark.
The desert does not pity. It has logic: you run out of body before you run out of sand.
He fell.
The stars tilted. The hum thinned to a thread. A word came without air.
Open.
Maybe he dreamed the next part—his mother's hand, the goat yielding, the chalked wall, the wrong pillar turning its head.
When he woke, the sky was old bone. Wind threw sand in his mouth. The pendant stuck to his palm. He didn't wipe it.
Footsteps.
Two figures emerged from the shimmer: one tall, angular, and scowling; the other lean, with a bright ring and an expression built for trouble.
The lean one reached him first. "Hey," he said kindly. "Don't die. I have plans."
"Bolt," the tall one said. "Water."
Bolt handed him a flask. The water tasted like a promise.
"Name?" the tall one asked.
"Eryn."
"I'm Amon." He glanced toward the faint smear of smoke. "What happened?"
Eryn couldn't answer. He offered the pendant. Amon didn't take it—only looked, recognition flickering.
Bolt sniffed the air. "Smells wrong. Like rain in a sealed room."
Amon's jaw tightened. "Obsidian."
"My mother—"
"We'll go," Amon said, decision already made. "But the ritual—"
Bolt elbowed him. "We have time to be people."
Amon didn't sigh. "Enough time to not be monsters." He offered Eryn a hand.
Eryn hesitated, then took it. The hum returned—patient, waiting. He looked toward the ashes of the village.
The whisper rode the wind.
You will open the way.
He didn't answer. He walked after the two strangers, because they were the first direction left to him.