Morning brought no comfort.
The sun rose pale and distant, a bleached coin behind a veil of ash. Its light touched the Salt Wastes without warmth, revealing dunes scored by old tracks and newer drag marks where bodies had been pulled east. Kael stood slowly, joints stiff, eyes burning from a night without rest.
The Sight greeted him like an open wound.
Everywhere beneath the crusted salt, half-buried in sand, tangled in thorn scrub...souls flickered. Some were faint, guttering embers close to extinction. Others burned sharp and bright, painful to look at, their longing pressing against Kael's thoughts.
His stomach growled.
The hunger answered.
It unfurled inside him like a dark flower, petals brushing his ribs, roots winding around his spine. It did not demand. It waited.
Kael staggered forward, boots crunching. "I ate," he told himself hoarsely. "I'm not hungry."
The hunger did not care about bread.
By midday, the wind shifted. With it came a sound wet, irregular footsteps and the scrape of bone on stone. Kael crested a low ridge and saw them: three dead, wandering without banner or order. One wore the remains of a fisher's coat, another a child's cap bleached white by salt.
They had not seen him.
Their souls burned like open throats.
Kael's mouth filled with saliva. His hands shook so badly he nearly dropped the spear. Each step closer eased the pressure in his skull, promised relief.
"No," he said again, louder this time.
The dead turned as one.
They charged.
Kael braced, spear leveled. The first corpse impaled itself, momentum snapping the shaft. The second tackled him, cold fingers clawing at his face. Kael screamed and drove his dagger into its eye. The third fell upon them both, teeth snapping inches from his throat.
Something broke.
Not bone.
Restraint.
Kael shoved the corpses away and reached not with his hands, but with will. The Sight flared. The world dimmed. The souls surged toward him, screaming soundlessly as they tore free.
They slammed into him like a tide.
Power flooded his veins, searing and intoxicating. Strength snapped through his limbs. Pain vanished. Fear vanished. The corpses collapsed into husks at his feet, truly dead at last.
Kael stood over them, chest heaving.
The hunger was gone.
So was the revulsion.
He waited for guilt.
It did not come.
Instead, there was a hollow satisfaction, clean and terrible.
Kael wiped blackened ichor from his hands and stared at them. The pale lines beneath his skin lingered longer now, tracing unfamiliar patterns before fading.
He tried to pray.
The words felt distant, meaningless shapes. The gods' names slid from his mind like water from stone.
A laugh escaped him short, sharp, and wrong.
Kael clamped his mouth shut.
As the sun dipped, shadows lengthened across the wastes. In the distance, a bell rang once, far away, unanswered.
Kael turned east, toward the sound, toward more souls burning in the dark.
The hunger slept.
But it was learning how to wake itself.