The Sand Graveyard did not grow easier with familiarity.
If anything, it grew more cruel.
Adlet returned to it with steadier steps and a sharper mind, but the environment itself offered no recognition. The dunes rose and fell without pattern. The heat pressed down relentlessly, draining strength with every hour that passed. Sand slipped beneath his boots, stealing traction, slowing movement, punishing hesitation.
This time, he stayed close to the rocky boundary of the world.
The immense stone wall loomed to his right—an unbroken, jagged expanse rising into the vault above. It offered no shelter from the heat, no shade worth mentioning, but it did provide something precious in the Sand Graveyard:
Direction.
And limits.
Adlet moved parallel to it, careful not to drift too far into the open sea of dunes. He rationed his water meticulously. Walked when the heat peaked. Ran only when necessary. His green Aura flowed lightly beneath his skin, reinforcing muscles and joints without wasting strength.
Days passed.
The desert did not answer—not in the way he needed it to.
No sign he could trust. No mark that held long enough to become proof. No hint that narrowed the search instead of widening it. The Sand Graveyard erased certainty with the same patience it used to carve the dunes. Wind smoothed over whatever had happened here yesterday. Heat baked the surface until it looked untouched, even when it wasn't.
The Omni Cheetah was known for speed, not territory. It hunted where it pleased. That made it dangerous—and difficult.
Too difficult.
By the fourth day, the silence began to weigh on him. It wasn't quiet—wind never truly stopped, and sand always found something to scrape against—but there was no signal. Nothing to read. Nothing to chase. Just emptiness that refused to become information.
Was he following nothing?
Had it already moved on?
Was he being patient… or foolish?
He reminded himself that this was the nature of the Sand Graveyard. Not confrontation—but erosion. It ground down certainty until only endurance remained.
He pressed on.
He wasn't alone out here—not truly.
Across those days, other presences kept slipping through the edge of his perception: a distant silhouette cresting a dune, a shadow cutting across pale sand, a shape half-buried and watching. Apexes. Real. Close enough to matter. Never the one he wanted.
A long-necked mass that lifted its head too high for comfort before sinking back down, disappearing as if the desert had swallowed it.
A lean, low figure that paced him from far away, never committing, always choosing angles that kept it between him and the open dunes.
Something wide and heavy that made the sand quiver with each slow step, like the Sand Graveyard itself was breathing beneath its weight.
Each time, Adlet adjusted without hesitation.
He veered.
He widened his path.
He lowered his presence and let the distance grow.
Not fear—calculation.
He wasn't here to test himself against every threat the Sand Graveyard offered. A fight wasn't just a fight out here. It was water lost. Aura wasted. Blood spilled for nothing. Even if he won, the desert would still collect its price afterward. It always did.
And there was another reason—simpler, stricter.
Guild rules.
You didn't kill outside your assignment—not in a place like Horus, where every Apex had value to someone, where priorities were measured in ranks and losses. If his parchment said Omni Cheetah, then that was the only death he was allowed to bring back.
Anything else wasn't "initiative."
It was a violation.
So he let the other Apexes keep their dunes.
He kept moving.
On the sixth day, exhaustion crept closer than he liked to admit. His body held, but the sand had begun to affect even his Aura-enhanced movement. The constant micro-corrections—shifting weight, catching balance, compensating for traction that never stayed consistent—added up in ways he couldn't ignore.
Every change in direction cost more than it should have.
Every leap landed shorter.
The green Aura could reinforce joints and muscle, but it couldn't rewrite physics. It couldn't turn sand into stone. It couldn't erase the drag of heat and thirst. It only let him pay longer before the bill came due.
Still, no sign of the cheetah.
The thought turned sour in his stomach. Not fear. Not yet.
Doubt.
If the Omni Cheetah wasn't here, then he was wasting days he couldn't afford. If it was here and he wasn't seeing it, then that meant something worse.
That meant it was seeing him.
And then—
"Adlet—move!"
Pami's voice tore through his mind like a blade.
There wasn't time to think about how she'd sensed it before he had, or what angle her awareness had caught. There was only the command and the fact that it came with urgency sharp enough to cut.
Instinct took over.
Green Aura surged.
Adlet twisted sideways as something passed through the space his head had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
Air exploded.
Sand sprayed violently as massive claws cut through the ground where he had been standing. The strike didn't just rake the surface—it carved, a deep furrow opening as if the desert had been split by a moving weapon.
Adlet rolled, came up hard on one knee, eyes wide, breath caught in his throat.
The Omni Cheetah stood several dozen meters away.
Three meters tall at the shoulder.
Lean.
Built for motion.
Its long legs were corded with dense muscle, joints angled for explosive acceleration. Massive retractable claws extended from each paw—curved, black, and impossibly sharp. Its yellow coat was marked by jagged black patterns like shattered blades, breaking up its outline even as it stood still.
As if stillness was only another kind of camouflage.
Its eyes locked onto him.
Cold.
Focused.
Assessing.
Adlet's breath came shallow.
He hadn't been hunting it.
He was the prey.
The Cheetah moved.
Not a charge.
A blur.
The distance collapsed so fast Adlet barely had time to process that it had moved at all. The sand didn't explode outward in a spray like most creatures. It streamed, drawn into motion by something that barely touched the ground long enough to leave a footprint.
Adlet reacted on the edge of panic.
Red Aura surged—an armored carapace snapping into place across his chest and shoulders.
The creature slammed into him.
The impact felt like a siege engine.
For a fraction of a second, Adlet thought the armor had held.
Then it fractured.
Shards of Aura scattered like glass under pressure, the red shell breaking apart into dispersing fragments as Adlet was thrown backward across the sand. He skidded, boots digging trenches that didn't slow him enough. Sand filled his mouth. Heat punched at his lungs as he coughed and forced his body to roll with the momentum.
He came up, already manifesting another layer.
Another charge.
Another impact.
Another shattering.
The Omni Cheetah didn't circle. Didn't pause. It attacked in relentless bursts—short, devastating accelerations that left no room to breathe. Each one hit from a different angle, claws raking, tearing through sand and Aura alike.
Adlet tried to track it and couldn't. Not cleanly. It wasn't just fast—it was efficient. It didn't waste motion in the way weaker Apexes did. It committed only to actions that carried it to advantage.
The red carapace wasn't armor out here.
It was a tax.
Every time it shattered, it took a piece of him with it. Not flesh—yet—but Aura. Focus. Stamina. The invisible reserve he could feel draining, drop by drop, as the desert heat kept pressing down.
Adlet grimaced, jaw tight.
This isn't working.
Every defense cost him Aura. Every shattered carapace drained him further.
He needed to respond.
He needed to make it pay for closing the distance.
The next burst came straight on.
Adlet switched.
Black Aura condensed—forming the Scarab horn along his forearm, dense and brutal, the sensation like molten weight settling into shape. He swung downward with all his strength, aiming for the shoulder, for bone, for anything that would slow it.
The strike missed.
The Omni Cheetah twisted mid-charge, its body pivoting with impossible fluidity, slipping past the blow by less than a meter. The horn slammed uselessly into sand hard enough to send a shock up Adlet's arm.
The cheetah didn't stop.
It vanished past him—
Then—
Behind him.
Adlet felt it more than he saw it: the shift in air, the subtle drag of motion at his back. His instincts screamed too late.
Red Aura snapped back into place, barely formed in time.
Claws tore through it.
Pain exploded across Adlet's abdomen as the impact sent him tumbling. The sensation was hot and immediate, a bright line of agony that stole his breath.
He hit the sand and kept rolling, leaving a smear that darkened as it soaked in.
Blood.
He forced himself upright, teeth clenched hard enough to taste iron.
The Omni Cheetah slowed.
Just slightly.
It circled now, movements measured, head low, shoulders rolling with restrained power. Its eyes never left him.
It had learned something.
It had cut him.
And it knew he was bleeding.
Adlet's mind raced, faster than his body could move.
Healing now would leave him open.
Standing still meant death.
Attacking meant nothing if he couldn't land a hit.
Green Aura could help him endure—but if he leaned on it too hard, he'd burn through what he needed for the real exchange. The one that would decide this.
The cheetah tensed.
Adlet felt it—an impending strike. Not a guess. Not intuition. A physical certainty in the way the creature's weight shifted, in the coiling of muscle that made the sand compress under its paws.
Instinct screamed.
Red Aura surged again.
Not as armor.
As something else.
A massive spectral turtle head formed before him, jaws opening as heat built behind its teeth. The air in front of Adlet shimmered, the sand beneath the apparition darkening as if it anticipated what was coming.
Flames erupted.
The blast tore across the sand in a wide, brutal arc. Heat rolled outward, warping the air, forcing the Omni Cheetah to leap back. Its claws dug deep as it landed farther away, body low, the edges of its coat rippling from the wash of heat.
It didn't attack again.
It watched.
Adlet's breath came ragged. Blood dripped from his side, warm against his skin before the heat of the desert began to dry it. The pain remained sharp—but distant, muted by focus.
The cheetah had changed tactics.
It understood.
Wait.
Let him weaken.
Let the desert finish what it started.
Adlet swallowed, throat dry enough that the motion felt like sandpaper.
He could heal.
But if he did… would that be the moment it struck?
The Sand Graveyard stretched endlessly around them.
No cover.
No escape.
No allies.
Only sand.
And death.
The Omni Cheetah crouched low, muscles coiled, eyes unblinking.
Adlet clenched his fists, feeling the tremor in his forearms, the fatigue in his legs, the way the sand shifted under every slight movement.
Defense had failed.
Attack had failed.
Movement had failed.
He was out of options.
And the desert waited to see what he would do next.