They hit the flats at a dead run, dunes collapsing behind them like falling roofs.
Far ahead, two impossible circles of blue burned in the sand—the twin oases—and beyond them, Keystra's spires shimmered beneath the domed mirage of Ra'teluun.
The serpent's hiss rolled over the ridge like thunder with teeth.
"Straight line," Amon said, angling left. "Hard ground there. It'll have to swim for it."
Bolt didn't look back. "Love the confidence. Hate the serpent."
They reached the sanctuary ring just as robed figures turned toward the commotion.
Master Serayin stepped forward—sun-browned, eyes sharp behind gauze veils—and raised a hand. Her two aides shifted into formation without a word.
"Amon," she said, calm even with a monster burrowing toward the city. "Inside the bounds. Now."
They crossed a line of carved obelisks into air that felt cooler—shade with a memory.
Sigils stitched themselves between stones as Serayin's aides began a low, braided chant, fingers weaving light into thread.
Amon kicked off his cloak, rolled his sleeves, and waded knee-deep into the left basin. "I'm the bridge," he told Eryn without looking. "You two: no heroics unless I drown."
Bolt raised a hand. "Define drown."
Serayin placed a palm-sized crystal—the Heart of the Twin Oases—on a stone dais between the pools.
"When the rite reaches the binding, we submerge the Heart. The waters synchronize. Keystra breathes evenly for another year."
The ground trembled. Sand hissed into the outer ring like poured grain.
"Begin," Serayin said.
The chant climbed. Veil patterns spun outward in gold threads.
Amon's hands moved with precise economy—settling, shaping, tightening—until the left oasis stilled to glass.
A tendril of light unspooled toward the right basin and touched it with a kiss. Water flared blue.
The sand serpent erupted through the far perimeter, glassy scales shredding stone.
Its head lifted, tasting heat. A ripple of panic ran through the novices.
Eryn didn't mean to move.
The pendant at his throat pulsed hot, and lightning gathered at his fingertips like a word already spoken.
He threw his palm up.
A white crack lanced from hand to air to beast—catching it across the jaw.
The serpent reared with a sound like a mountain hating you.
"Eryn—!" Amon started.
The desert answered.
Wind punched in from three directions at once.
Sand climbed the sky. The serpent's rage tore a storm out of the ground, and the oases vanished behind a roaring sheet of grit.
Shapes moved in the storm—men in mirrored scarves, low and quick, hands practiced.
Bolt saw them first. "Guests!"
"Hold formation!" Serayin barked, throwing a lattice of light over the dais.
It held—then shuddered as a knife of black glass slid between threads and snipped them clean.
A figure shouldered through the gale—Razan of the Cindral Veil, mirrored mask flecked with sand.
His gauntlet flashed once. A saboteur's seal bloomed and died.
The Heart vanished into a shockproof case and a pair of hands.
A rope jerked twice. The carriers disappeared into the sand.
"Amon—" Bolt started.
"I see them," Amon said, voice flat with that particular calm that means panic later.
He sank the last sigil he could and yanked himself out of the water.
Serayin and her aides fought to keep the rite alive, but without the Heart the light unraveled like cut silk.
The storm broke as suddenly as it began.
The serpent, denied heat, tunneled away with a spiteful flick of its tail.
Silence fell in a rush. The sanctum looked chewed.
Serayin stared at the empty pedestal.
When she spoke, her voice didn't crack—only sharpened.
"Without the Heart, the waters will fall out of rhythm. We can hold for a day. Maybe."
She turned to Amon, then to Eryn—the boy with lightning. "Can you track them?"
Bolt lifted his hands, fingers spread. "Not through a sandblaster. Their prints are already half in the next province."
Amon stepped out of the basin, water running off in perfect lines.
He looked at the empty ring, then at the faint shimmer of the Ra'teluun dome beyond the walls—steady, hungry.
"We'll find them," he said. "But not by sniffing dunes."
Serayin nodded once. "You have my sanction—and my silence. Take what you need."
They made camp beyond the obelisks as the sun bled lower.
The city hummed under its dome like a beehive that had forgotten winter could end.
Bolt built a small, well-behaved fire.
Eryn sat with his back to a carved stone, staring at his hands.
"What you did," Amon said at last, settling opposite, "wasn't wrong."
"It felt wrong," Eryn said.
"It was big," Bolt said, passing him a cup. "Big always feels wrong at first. Drink."
They watched the light crawl over the sanctuary face.
After a while, Amon reached into the sand with his index finger and drew a slow, simple sigil.
"You asked what veilweaving is," he said. "Here's the beginner answer: everyone's will presses on the world. Veilweaving teaches your will to hold its shape."
Bolt held up both hands, palms together, then peeled them apart.
"Think of it like music. Everyone hums. Veilweaving lets you tune the note—or mute someone else's."
Amon traced the next shape.
"Three basics you'll need now: Veil Touch—feel the ripple and push back.
Thread Bind—pin a motion for a breath.
Cut Seal—break a trick before it hurts you."
Eryn copied the first with clumsy fingers.
The air shivered across his skin like a shy animal.
He tried again. The tremor came cleaner.
"Good," Amon said, which was praise from him.
"Now Veil Feint." He shifted his hand, fingers drawing a false pattern.
The air twitched in the wrong place—exactly as intended.
Bolt pointed his cup at Eryn.
"Useful when people like Razan can feel your tells. Show him a shadow. Hit him with the song."
Eryn tried.
The first feint was messy; the second made Amon's brow lift a fraction.
The third earned a small nod.
They ate in quiet for a while, everything tasting like sand and relief and not enough.
Eryn turned the pendant over in his palm.
"That storm—Razan's mask—it felt like more than veilweaving."
"Soulbranding," Bolt said. "Different art. Instead of shaping the veil, you pour yourself into a vessel—a ring, a mask, a blade—and it remembers you. Fights with you."
"The more you fight, the more it remembers," Amon added. "Until it starts fighting for you."
Bolt tapped his own banded ring. The metal flexed like breathing skin. "Mine keeps me standing when most men would be flat. Living barrier, tied to my Endurance Pillar."
Amon didn't touch his artifacts, just said, "Glass for precision. Fire for power. Both cost blood if I'm careless."
"So it's just… magic items?" Eryn asked.
"If you think it's just the tool, you'll break it," Amon said. "It's the bond that matters. Soulbranding is you, made sharp."
"What now?" Eryn asked.
"We go back to Keystra," Amon said. "There's a man in the lower market—Haarid of the Thousand Locks. If anyone has a relic that can listen for a stolen heart, it's him."
Bolt threw another stick on the fire.
"Then we track Razan across every pretty dune he thinks will hide him.
Then we get our fancy rock back.
Then we sleep for twelve minutes."
Eryn looked toward the city.
The dome shivered—so brief he might have imagined it.
For a blink, it seemed to darken, as if something on the inside had pressed its face against the glass.
He rubbed the pendant with his thumb.
It was warm.
"Do you hear it?" he asked, not sure which it he meant.
Amon's mouth thinned. "Sometimes."
Bolt bumped his shoulder.
"Tomorrow you'll hear a lot of things. Try to ignore the ones that want to bite you."
They slept in shifts.
Far away, in a canyon cut like a broken bowl, Razan set the Heart's case on a table and turned it once in the low light.
A shadow leaned in the doorway—a man in obsidian plates, face unreadable beneath a veil-scope.
"The storm was… opportunistic," Razan said lightly.
"The storm was summoned," the man replied. "By the boy who should not exist."
Razan's fingers stilled. "Then the payment doubles."
The obsidian figure's voice was mild. "It already has."
He lifted the scope to his eye again, tracking a distant trio by faint signatures only predators and priests could read.
"Carry the Heart to ground the city cannot find. We will attend to the rest."
He tucked the scope away.
For an instant, in the polished steel of the doorway hinge, two starless eyes looked back at him from a place that had no reflection.
He did not bow to them.
He only smiled.