The man didn't move. He stayed hunched over the counter.
"I asked if you hit your head," the man said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly rasp. He wasn't being poetic. He was looking at her with the blunt suspicion of someone who lived in a world where "strange" usually meant "dangerous." "Because you're speaking the Trade Tongue like you were born to it, but you're looking at that map like it's written in in some gibberish. People who lose their place usually leave a bit of their brain behind on the road."
Alisa stared at him, her throat working. She wanted to tell him that she shouldn't know these words. She wanted to tell him that her brain was screaming in Russian while her mouth moved in a language that tasted like salt and old stone.
"I didn't hit my head," she whispered. "I just... I don't know why I can understand you. I just do."
The man grunted, a short, sharp sound of disbelief, but he didn't press it. He had bigger problems now. He glanced at the front door—which Alisa had closed behind her to keep out the oppressive heat—and then back at her.
"The girl," Alisa said, her voice trembling. "Iris. The one with the paper-white hair. Do you know her? Is there anyone like her in this place?"
The man's hand, calloused and dark from the sun, tightened on the edge of the counter. "I've lived on the edge of the Sahra Vey for sixty years, girl. I've seen traders from the south and madmen who've spent too long in the sun, but I don't know any 'Iris.' And I've never seen anyone with hair like that unless they were a corpse bleached white by the dunes."
"She called this place something else," Alisa persisted, her blue eyes searching his. "She didn't call it the Sahra Vey. She called the desert the Sablewaste. And the thing that tried to catch me—the door—she called that the Eima."
The man went dead still. It was as if she had pulled a knife. He reached out and folded the corner of the map back over itself, hiding the center of the wasteland as if even looking at the paper was dangerous now.
"Don't use those names," he hissed, his voice dropping to a jagged whisper. "The Sahra Vey is the land. The Sablewaste... that's what the ancient maps called it before. And the Eima?" He shuddered, a visible tremor in his thick shoulders. "The Eima isn't a Place or a single Being. It's the name for the rot that lives inside the sand. It's the hunger. If that girl used those words... then you weren't talking to a person, Alisa. You were talking to something that was here before the first stone was laid."
Alisa felt a cold shiver race down her spine, despite the sweltering air. "Also she told me to get inside before night. What happens? What's out there?"
"The night in the Waste doesn't just hide things, girl. It erases them," the man said grimly. "The dark puts teeth in your regrets. The Eima will use a voice you love to call you out into the dunes until you wander so far you forget which way is up. It's a predator that feeds on the echoes of the dead. If you're out there when the stars turn, you don't just die—you get unmade,like you never existed. But that is just a Myth because no one ever survived what ever is out there." He said with a grim tone.
Alisa already looked overhelmed before her hand flew to the pouch in her pocket. The weight of it felt like a lead sinker. She needed a room. She needed a bolt on a door that wouldn't talk back to her.
"A room," she managed to say. "Please."
She opened the pouch just a crack, intending to find a coin, but the dimness of the inn was instantly pierced by a low, rhythmic, crimson pulse.
The man didn't just gasp; he recoiled so hard his chair barked against the floorboards. His eyes bulged, tracking the light in her hand with a look of pure, unadulterated horror.
"Gods above," he wheezed, his face turning the color of ash. "Close it! Close the bag!"
Alisa flinched, pulling the drawstring tight. "I— I just wanted to pay—"
"One of those," the man whispered, his voice cracking, "could buy an entire palace in Suraam. It could buy this inn, the well, and every soul for ten miles. Those are Sovereign Shards. They don't belong in a pouch, and they certainly don't belong in the hands of a stray."
He looked at her, his gaze darting to the bulge in her coat. There were hundreds. A fortune that could drown the world in blood sat in the lap of a fifteen-year-old girl who looked like she'd just been coughed up by the earth.
"Hide them," he commanded, leaning over the counter, his voice a frantic urgent whisper. "Deep in your coat. If anyone—any scavenger, any traveler—sees the glow of that wealth, they won't just rob you. They'll kill you before you can even explain where you got them. You're walking around with a target painted on your heart."
Alisa shoved the pouch into the deepest inner pocket of her white coat, her pulse racing. "I didn't know. The girl... Iris... she just gave them to me."
"The girl again," the man repeated, his voice full of a new, sharper fear. He looked at Alisa's black hair, the piercing blue of her eyes, and the way she clutched that silver half-moon necklace like a lifeline. "How old are you young girl?"
"Fifteen," Alisa whispered.
"Fifteen," he echoed, shaking his head. "You're a child. Where is your family? Why are you alone on the edge of the Sablewaste with a bag of blood-gold? Who let you walk into this hell by yourself?"
Alisa felt the weight of the coins against her ribs and the memory of the barn in her head. The man's questions were a different kind of desert—vast, empty, and impossible to cross.
"I don't have anyone," she said, her voice small, ragged, and final. "I'm just... I'm just here."
The man went quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that meant he was thinking up a clever answer—this was the kind that made his shoulders lock, like his body had decided stillness was the safest thing it could do. He stayed behind the counter with both hands braced on the wood, knuckles pale, eyes fixed on the pouch as if it might split open and spill something poisonous onto his floor.
A girl—too young for the look in her eyes. Dust-baked, shaking in ways she was trying to hide. Desert layers on her body, and in her arms a bundled mess of heavy winter clothes like she'd carried her old life in with her and refused to let go.
And inside that pouch—
He'd seen coin before. He'd seen rich travelers, smugglers, gamblers.
He hadn't seen that.
He swallowed. It looked painful.
"Right," he said finally. His voice came out rough, as if he just woke up. He still didn't look at her. He looked past her shoulder instead, toward the front door where the last light of day was thinning—orange draining into violet through the slats of the shutters.
"The sun's giving up," he muttered. "I'm not having you drop in my common room."
Alisa's arms tightened around the bundle of winter clothes without her noticing. Fabric creaked faintly under her grip. She'd been clinging to them since the oasis like they were proof she hadn't simply been invented by heat and grief.
The man's jaw shifted once, like he was grinding his teeth on a decision he didn't want to make.
Then he bent down behind the counter.
The wood groaned. Something metal clinked.
When he straightened, he was holding a heavy iron key tied to a stiff strip of boiled leather—old, dark with use, the kind you didn't misplace because you couldn't afford to.
He set it on the counter between them.
"Upstairs," he said. "Back there. Second door on the right."
His eyes flicked over her face—cracked lips, the way she kept swallowing like her throat was sandpaper, the way she stood too upright because collapsing felt like a trap you couldn't climb out of.
"There's water in the room," he added, quieter. Not kinder—just less sharp. "Not good water. But it's water."
Alisa's breath caught. She nodded too quickly, like she was afraid the offer would vanish if she didn't accept it fast enough.
He hesitated—then, almost reluctantly, slid the key closer.
"No payment," he said.
Then, like he hated how that sounded, he corrected himself without meeting her eyes.
"Not tonight."
Alisa opened her mouth. A thank-you rose and got stuck somewhere between pride and shock. Her throat burned. She shut it again.
He wasn't finished.
"Listen," he said, voice dropping. Outside, the wind was starting to wake up—low and steady, threading around the inn like fingers searching for cracks. "You wash. You sleep. You don't go back out there."
Alisa's gaze snapped up. "I—"
"No." The word came out sharper than he probably meant. He exhaled hard, like he'd snapped at her by accident and couldn't take it back. "Not 'I'll try.' Not 'just for a moment.' You do not open that door again tonight for anything."
Her stomach tightened. "Why?"
For the first time, he looked her in the eyes.
Not with cruelty. With something older. Practical. The kind of fear that wasn't loud because it had survived too long to waste energy.
"Because out here," he said slowly, "night makes people stupid. Or desperate. Or both. And anything that can smell desperation… it comes closer."
Alisa's throat closed. The door flashed in her mind—her sister's voice peeling into something hollow, the sand tightening like a hand.
She nodded, small, because the alternative was arguing and she didn't have enough life left in her to argue.
The man leaned back like he'd pushed himself past his limit. His gaze flicked to the pouch again, quick as a flinch.
"And that bag," he said. "You keep it hidden. If anyone sees those—" He stopped. Shook his head once, like he didn't want to form the picture. "Not my business how you got them. But it will be everyone's business if they find out you have them."
Alisa's fingers curled around the pouch instinctively, pressing it tighter against her side until the cloth bit into her palm.
He came around the counter with a stiff motion, joints popping. He didn't put a hand on her shoulder. He didn't guide her like she was a child.
He just walked with her toward the stairs—fast enough that she had to move or be left behind—and somehow that felt like protection. Like being motionless was an invitation.
At the foot of the stairs he stopped.
The light from the common room barely reached up there. The upper floor was a throat of shadow.
He looked at her then—really looked.
"You hear me?" he asked.
Alisa swallowed. Her mouth tasted like dust and old fear. "Yes."
"The key stays in the lock," he said. "Bolt stays thrown. If you hear knocking, if you hear someone calling, if you hear—" his gaze flicked, briefly, to the chain at her neck, to the half-moon pendant she kept touching like a reflex, then back to her eyes "—anything. You don't answer. You don't open it. You don't even talk back."
Her heart hammered. She nodded anyway.
He held her gaze for another beat, as if trying to force the warning down past her exhaustion where it would stick.
Then he stepped back, like distance was safer for both of them.
"Go," he said quietly.
Alisa climbed.
Each step creaked under her boots, the wood tired and hollow. Her bundle shifted in her arms—heavy and ridiculous in this heat, like she was carrying a piece of snow through a world that didn't believe in it.
At the top, the second door on the right. The key turned with a harsh scrape, metal complaining in the lock.
The room was small: stone and cedar, holding the day's heat like a reluctant secret. Uneven plaster on the walls, gritty under her fingertips. A narrow bed in the corner with a mattress stuffed with dry grass that rustled when she brushed it. A folding screen near the back, and behind it the dull rim of a copper tub mottled green with age.
A basin sat on a low stand beside a hand pump.
She closed the door.
Threw the bolt.
Left the key in the lock like he'd told her to.
She stared at it for a second too long—like it was the only thing holding the outside world at bay.
Then she moved, because if she stopped moving, her thoughts would catch up and crush her.
She set her bundle of winter clothes on the chair. The coat. The thermals. The damp ushanka. They looked obscene in here, like a dead animal draped over furniture.
She worked the pump. It groaned. Water came out metallic and sharp-smelling, cold enough to make her flinch.
She washed anyway.
Sand came off her skin in gritty streaks. She scrubbed her arms, her neck, her face until her palms stung and her forearms burned. Not because she cared about cleanliness—because she couldn't stand the feeling of the desert still being on her while she was trapped behind a bolted door. Like if she didn't scrub hard enough, the dunes would follow her into the room.
She rinsed her hair in awkward handfuls. Water ran down her back. The iron smell clung to everything.
When she was done, she laid her winter layers out on the chair and stool to dry—heavy fabric darkened with damp. The clothes looked like shed skin from a different life.
Then she crawled onto the bed and collapsed without truly choosing to.
She lay there in the dark, waiting for her heartbeat to slow.
It didn't.
She tucked the pouch under her pillow anyway. Not because she trusted it—because she didn't trust anything else. The faint weight of the coins pressed against the thin bedding, and she hated that it comforted her. Hated that her brain was already learning to cling to whatever it could.
Exhaustion finally took her.
Sleep brought the barn.
Not a neat dream. Not a story.
Just impact.
Cold biting her lungs. The sting of rust on her skin. The taste of blood and panic. Her hands—bare hands—fumbling with a lock that wouldn't turn. The smell of hay so thick it felt like it was coating the inside of her throat.
The ladder. The hole. Her legs refusing to move.
Move. Move. Please move.
And then the jerk—hair yanked so hard her scalp screamed, her body dragged down like she weighed nothing. The floor slamming her. The shock of pain splintering up her spine.
She tried to speak. No voice came out.
A shadow above her.
Not a face—just the shape of a person and the certainty of a weapon.
The sound of the first shot didn't arrive like sound.
It arrived like something tearing through her whole world.
Her body jerked. Heat and numbness at once. A second shot. A third. Her chest caving inward with each impact, like her bones were forgetting how to hold her.
She reached for her pendant in the dream the same way she'd reached for it in the desert—like an animal reaching for something familiar while it dies.
And then—
A different sound cut through it.
Not a gunshot.
Not wind.
A deep boom that shook the room.
Alisa's eyes snapped open.
For a second she didn't know where she was. The darkness was complete, the air thick and warm. Her heart was hammering so violently she felt sick. Her hands were clenched so hard her nails bit into her palms.
Then the inn came back to her: the bed. The plaster smell. The grass-stuffed mattress rustling under her.
Another boom rolled through the building.
The shutters rattled in their iron latches.
Dust sifted from somewhere above, pattering softly onto the floor like dry rain.
Alisa sat up so fast the room tilted. She grabbed the pillow without thinking—felt the pouch underneath—and shoved it tight against her stomach like a shield.
Outside, something exploded again—closer this time—followed by a faint, stretched-out sound like shouting carried by wind.
She froze, breath caught in her throat, listening.
Alisa stayed under the blanket until she couldn't.
At first it worked—sort of. The fabric over her head made the darkness smaller, made the room feel like it had edges she could touch. She could pretend she was somewhere else. A tent. A closet. A childish hiding place where the world couldn't reach her if she held her breath.
Then the first explosion hit, and the bed jumped beneath her like an animal flinching.
The sound wasn't distant thunder. It was close enough to taste—dust shaking loose from the ceiling, the window shutters rattling, the copper tub behind the screen giving a dull metallic gong as it rocked in place. The inn groaned in its bones, ancient wood complaining as if it had a voice.
Alisa's hands clamped over her ears. It didn't help. The noise traveled through the mattress, through her ribs, through her teeth.
Stop. Stop. Please stop.
Her mind tried to do what it always did when terror got too big—attach itself to something small. A detail. A rule. A routine.
The key is in the lock.
The bolt is thrown.
Don't open the door.
Wash. Sleep. Survive the dark.
But the explosions kept coming.
Not constant—worse. Spaced out, unpredictable. Long enough between each one that she'd start to hope it was over, then—
BOOM.
Another shockwave. Another tremor. Another reminder that whatever was happening was happening right outside.
She curled tighter, knees pressed to chest, and the blanket began to feel less like protection and more like a trap. Heat from her own breathing built under it. Her throat was still raw from sand and panic. The air in the room tasted like plaster, old water, and the faint iron of the basin.
Her heartbeat wouldn't slow. It kept sprinting like it had somewhere to go.
A thought wormed in, quiet and awful:
What if the inn isn't safe?
Not because the bolt might fail—because something else might not care about bolts.
Her mind offered images anyway: the barn's darkness, the gun, the sensation of helplessness. Not just dying—dying while her body refused to move.
Alisa swallowed hard, trying to force saliva where there was none.
If I die here, I won't even know why.
That—more than the sound—made her move.
She threw the blanket off like it had burned her.
The room was black. Real black. She could barely make out the pale rectangle of the shutters. Her fingers found the key where she'd left it, cold iron biting her skin.
Another explosion rolled through the inn. The doorframe trembled under her palm.
Alisa flinched, then stood there anyway, breathing shallowly, listening.
Nothing inside the room. No footsteps. No whispering. No click at the lock.
Just… outside. Always outside.
She unbolted the door.
The sound of metal sliding was too loud in her head.
She cracked it open and slipped into the hallway.
The inn's upper level was a narrow throat of darkness. The air was cooler than the desert but still dry, stale—air that had been trapped in wood for years. Her bare feet were quiet on the boards. She moved like she was afraid the shadows might wake up if she walked too fast.
At the top of the stairs she paused, gripping the rail so tightly her hand hurt.
Down below, the common room was almost entirely black. Moonlight leaked in through the shutters in thin, pale stripes, laying bars across the floor. The map on the counter was only a lighter blotch in the gloom. The tables were hunched silhouettes.
Another boom hit, closer now, and the whole room shuddered. Dust drifted in the moonbeams like slow snow.
Alisa started down.
Each step creaked softly, and each creak made her stomach twist—too loud, too loud—but nothing answered her from below. No voice. No movement.
She reached the bottom and froze at the edge of the common room, letting her eyes adjust.
The counter was empty. The old man wasn't there.
That was the first cold spike of fear.
Where is he?
Another explosion outside—brighter, somehow, like the sound had light in it. The shutters rattled. The hanging sign out front clinked faintly.
Alisa's gaze snapped to the front door.
Moonlight spilled around its edges, a thin line on the floor. The wind's low moan seeped through the cracks like a breath.
She moved toward it slowly, clutching her winter bundle against her chest even though it was stupid—dead weight, sweaty cloth, a relic. But it was hers. It was proof.
Her bare feet whispered over floorboards. Her throat was tight. Every part of her wanted to turn around and run back upstairs and pretend she hadn't heard anything.
Then something screamed outside.
Not a person. Not an animal.
A sound like sand being ripped apart.
Alisa stopped so abruptly she nearly fell.
Her hand found the door latch. It was cold and rough under her fingers.
She told herself, Just a crack. Just a look.
She opened it slowly.
The desert hit her like a wall.
Wind. Dry heat that still lingered even at night. Sand stinging her cheeks. Moonlight turning the dunes into pale, sharp waves.
And there—just beyond the inn's stone threshold—was the fight.
At first her brain refused to parse it.
The night outside was alive.
The sand was moving.
Not drifting. Not being pushed by wind. Not rolling the way dunes roll when the night cools and the world settles.
This was aimed.
It rose in thick, whipping tendrils from the ground itself—cords of sand packed so tight they looked almost solid, like ropes made from a thousand tiny teeth. They snapped through the air faster than her eyes could cleanly follow. The moonlight caught them in flashes—pale arcs, then nothing, then pale again—like something blinking too fast to be real.
They weren't random.
They were hunting.
At the old man.
He stood a few paces beyond the inn's threshold, planted in open desert where there was nowhere to hide. Moonlight striped his shoulders in thin bands through blowing grit, his scarf whipping like a flag that refused to surrender.
He should have looked small.
He should have looked old.
He should have looked like a man who would die the moment the desert decided it wanted him gone.
He didn't.
He moved.
Alisa's brain tried to file it under fast—the way it filed athletes, soldiers, people on TV—
—and failed immediately.
This wasn't speed the body produced. This was speed that made the body look like it was skipping frames.
A tendril cracked toward him—so violent it made a sound like the air itself tearing—and he was simply not there.
One moment he occupied that space.
The next, he'd shifted a full meter sideways with a lightness so clean it made her stomach pitch. No stumble. No heavy landing. No sand spraying up from his feet like it should have.
Just… absence. Then presence. Like he had learned how to step between moments.
Alisa's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Her throat had locked around the same thought again and again, a loop of pure disbelief:
That's not possible. That's not possible. That's not possible.
He held something in his right hand.
A short, thick cylinder of black basalt capped with iron rings—wrapped at the grip with sun-dried hide. It looked like a piece of ruined architecture someone had stolen from a tomb. Like a pillar you'd expect to be bolted into a floor, not wielded.
It looked impossibly heavy.
The kind of thing that would drag a man's arm down, slow his swing, force him to fight like a brute.
And then he moved it.
Not like a club.
Not like a hammer.
Like a blade.
He drove it forward with the sharpness of a thrusting sword—fast, clean, precise—his wrist snapping, his elbow guiding, his whole body aligned like he'd been born to fight with that weight.
The basalt cut through the air and made a low, terrible howl—deep and hungry, like wind being dragged down a tunnel toward something that wanted to swallow it.
Then it hit.
He met the sand-tendril mid-strike and punched the Pillar through it.
BOOM.
A thunderclap trapped at ground level. Not just loud—dense. The sound had mass. It slammed into the air around the inn, into Alisa's ribs, into her teeth, into the hinge of the door she was gripping.
The impact didn't fling sand away.
It crushed it.
The tendril didn't break apart like a wave.
It collapsed into fine grey powder, spilling down like ash.
Alisa's vision blurred from the shock. Her hands clenched the doorframe until her knuckles ached.
That weapon—
Another tendril lashed in instantly, faster, sharper—then split mid-flight into two, then four, like it learned the first time and refused to repeat the mistake. The tips flattened into barbed shapes, hooks forming out of grit—made not to strike, but to catch. To grab his limbs. To drag him down.
Her heart jumped into her throat.
It's adapting.
The old man didn't flinch.
He pivoted, feet barely disturbing the sand, body turning with a smoothness that didn't match his age at all. He didn't step back. He stepped in—right toward the incoming hooks—like he'd chosen the most dangerous line on purpose.
He flicked the Weapon sideways.
Not a heavy swing—an almost casual cut, fast as a dagger slash.
The basalt screamed through the air, the howl sharpening.
He clipped one tendril at its "joint," where it narrowed, and the entire limb imploded into powder.
The other hook slammed toward his chest—
He twisted.
A hair's breadth. A breath's width. The hook tore past him so close it lifted fabric threads from his sleeve.
He drove the basalt down into the ground with a short, violent thrust.
BOOM.
The desert answered like it had been struck in the spine.
Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the impact point—not just splitting sand, but forcing packed earth up through it. Jagged ridges of stone surged from beneath the dunes like bones being shoved up from a grave. The ground heaved, reshaping under pure force.
The tendril hit the rising ridge and detonated into grey dust.
Alisa's lungs forgot how to work.
Earth… he just— he just—
Another wave came.
Not one tendril.
Dozens.
A storm of intent. A swarm of limbs. Sand erupting into spears from below, cords whipping from above, scything arcs from the sides. Some moved like whips, some like snakes, some like blades.
They weren't just attacking.
They were testing.
They began to sync to his rhythm—striking where he would dodge, splitting where he would parry, baiting him into openings that weren't there a heartbeat ago.
Alisa's eyes watered from staring too hard. She couldn't track all of it. She couldn't even track him properly—only the afterimages of movement, the way the moonlight caught his scarf and then lost it.
How… how is he doing that?
He moved through it like he was reading a pattern written inside the air.
Dodge—no, slip.
Step—no, vanish.
He didn't retreat. He threaded himself between strikes so tight it looked like the tendrils were missing by luck—until she realized they weren't missing by luck at all.
They were missing because he was never where they thought he'd be.
And that weapon—that weapon—kept moving like it had no weight.
He used it like a sword when he needed precision.
Like a dagger when he needed speed.
And when he needed violence—
He turned it into a pillar again.
He drove it forward like a battering ram.
Every impact detonated the world.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
The dunes shivered. The air shook. Grey powder rained in a haze so thick it glittered in moonlight like dead snow.
And the old man—
He still didn't look overwhelmed.
That was the worst part.
The sand was monstrous—impossible—coming at him like the entire desert had decided it wanted him erased from existence.
And he fought it with the cold efficiency of someone swatting away insects.
No shouting.
No cursing.
No strained breathing.
Just motion. Calculation. Control.
A tendril came low, trying to wrap his ankle and yank.
It almost succeeded—sand curling around his boot—
—and Alisa's stomach dropped because finally, finally the desert had caught him.
He stepped once.
Light. Graceful. A half-turn that shouldn't have been enough.
The coil missed by an inch, sliding off as if his leg had turned to smoke.
He brought the basalt down in a short arc—fast as a knife strike.
BOOM.
The coil collapsed into grey powder like it had never been anything else.
Alisa's hands were shaking. She didn't remember starting to tremble.
What is he?
Her mind tried to make him human because the alternative was too big to hold.
But nothing about what she was seeing fit inside "human."
The desert struck.
He dodged.
It wasn't a fight.
It was a demonstration of difference.
The sand kept changing—tips becoming hooks, hooks becoming blades, blades becoming wide nets that tried to trap him. The tendrils began to strike in staggered rhythms—one to force his dodge, one to punish the dodge, one to catch where his foot would land—
And he answered with new angles, new timing, new cruelty.
He stopped meeting the tendrils head-on.
He began cutting them at their base.
One thrust of the Weapon into the sand—quick, surgical—and the "root" of a tendril would shatter, the entire limb dissolving mid-air.
Sometimes he didn't even swing.
He would tap.
A short jab.
A flick of the wrist.
And a tendril would become powder, as if the basalt didn't just hit it—it unmade it.
The cracks in the earth widened with each impact. Stone ridges rose like jagged teeth. The inn's threshold trembled beneath Alisa's bare feet, and she realized she was holding herself upright against the doorframe like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
Then the sand changed again.
It stopped splitting into many.
It gathered.
It pooled in one place—huge, dense, moving with the kind of certainty that felt… angry.
The dunes swelled, and an enormous wave formed a single thick arm, thicker than a tree trunk, shaped like a blunt fist made of compacted sand and stone.
It rose high above him.
For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Alisa's breath caught so hard it hurt.
He can't dodge that—
He didn't try.
He stepped forward instead.
And in that instant, the old man looked less like someone surviving and more like someone deciding.
He drove the Pillar straight into the ground.
Not a slam—an injection. Like he was planting the weapon into the desert's heart.
The howl deepened—lower, darker—like the world itself was being dragged toward the weapon's hunger.
BOOM.
The blast cracked the earth open in a perfect ring. Stone erupted outward in a jagged crown. The massive sand-arm froze mid-fall—stopped dead like something had stolen its momentumand then shattered into grey powder, collapsing around him in a silent avalanche.
For a moment there was no sound but wind.
No intent.
No movement that wasn't natural.
The desert settled like a beast lying down because it had been reminded who held the leash.
Alisa's ears rang. Her chest hurt.
She realized she'd been holding her breath so long her lungs were burning.
She forced air in, shaking.
Outside, the old man stood alone in the aftermath, weapon hanging at his side. His shoulders barely moved. He looked over the quiet dunes like someone looking at a mess they would have to sweep later.
Like it had been an inconvenience.
Not a threat.
Then he turned slightly—just enough for moonlight to catch the edge of his face—
And Alisa jerked back instinctively, heart slamming against her ribs.
Because she couldn't tell—
couldn't tell at all—
whether he already knew she was watching.
And the thought that he might—
that he might have known the whole time, and simply let her see—
made her feel smaller than the dunes.
He didn't call out to her.
That was the first thing that made her blood run cold.
The fight ended and the desert went still, and he didn't bark an order, didn't demand she show herself, didn't even glance toward the inn like he was checking whether she'd stayed put.
He simply stood there in the moonlight, the basalt cylinder hanging at his side, and breathed—slowly, evenly—like the last few minutes hadn't been a storm of moving sand and thunder trapped in air.
Alisa stayed frozen behind the door.
Her fingers hurt from gripping the frame. She hadn't noticed until now—until the silence gave her space to feel her own body again. Her heart was still punching at her ribs, too loud in her ears, too fast to be real. The world smelled like dust and cracked stone and something scorched, like lightning had kissed the sand.
Then he shifted.
Not in a dramatic way. Not like someone searching.
Like someone who already knew.
He turned his head slightly, and his eyes went straight to the thin seam of darkness where she was hiding.
A faint curve tugged at his mouth. Not friendly. Not cruel. Just… knowing.
Alisa's stomach dropped so hard she felt nauseous.
The old man took one step toward the inn—
—and the distance folded. That was the only way her mind could describe it. The desert was there, the dunes, the moon, the wrecked ground… and then suddenly he was at the threshold.
Close enough that she could see the fine grit caught in the lines of his hands. Close enough to smell sweat and iron on his scarf.
Close enough that the basalt weapon looked even more impossible—dense, ringed with iron, ugly and heavy as a ruin.
He lifted two fingers and tapped her shoulder lightly.
Alisa flinched like she'd been struck.
"Curious, aren't you," he said, voice low.
She couldn't speak. Her throat locked up like it was remembering being dry.
He looked past her into the inn like he was checking the shadows inside, then back at her.
"Come on," he said, and nodded toward the common room. "Before you pass out on my doorstep."
Alisa's legs moved before her pride could argue.
She bolted the door behind them with shaking hands. The click sounded too small to mean anything against a desert that could rise up and aim, but she did it anyway because it was the only kind of control she had left.
The common room was black except for pale strips of moonlight leaking through shutters. The tables looked like shapes rather than furniture. Dust hung in the air like it refused to settle.
The old man walked behind the counter and set the basalt cylinder down with care—careful enough to tell her he respected its weight, but casual enough to tell her he wasn't afraid of it.
He sat at the nearest table like his bones were suddenly old again now that the danger was done.
Then he looked at her properly.
She stood there in her desert clothes, scarf around her head, clutching her winter bundle against her chest like it was a child. Her coat and thermals and ushanka—out of place, heavy, wrong in this climate, but hers. Proof of before. Proof that she hadn't imagined her life.
His gaze flicked once to the pouch at her side, then away.
He didn't mention it. Not yet.
"You're still shaking," he said.
"I'm fine," she lied automatically.
He let out a short breath through his nose, the closest thing to a laugh. "Yeah. Sure."
He stood, went to a shelf behind the counter, and poured water into a glass. Not gentle. Practical. The water clinked against chipped glass like the inn itself was tired.
He slid it toward her.
"Drink," he said. "Your voice is scraping like sandpaper."
Alisa took it with both hands and drank too fast. The water tasted metallic, like old pipes, but it didn't matter. It cut through the pain in her throat and made her chest loosen enough to breathe without panic.
When she set the glass down, her hands were still trembling—but quieter now.
The old man leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the bridge of his nose like he was trying to push a headache away.
Then he looked at her again, and his tone shifted.
"I see I've got a lot of explaining to do," he said.
Alisa swallowed. "What… what are you?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Tired."
"That's not what I meant."
He studied her for a moment—her wide eyes, her clenched shoulders, the way she kept holding her winter clothes like letting go would make them disappear.
Then he sighed, like he'd decided not to be difficult.
"I'm the keeper of this post," he said. "This inn. This stretch of road. Kharif's Reach."
"You were sent here?"
He nodded once. "A long time ago."
"By who?"
"The King," he said simply.
The word landed with weight. Not because Alisa understood it—because he said it like it was an oath that still held even after years.
"I keep the desert in check," he continued. "I keep travelers from dying when I can. And I keep this place standing."
Alisa stared at him. "You fight… the desert."
He shrugged. "Something like that."
Her hands curled into her winter bundle. The memory of sand snapping like tentacles made her skin crawl.
"How are you that fast?" she asked, voice sharper than she intended. "How are you doing any of this? That weapon— it looks like it would break a normal person's arms."
The corner of his mouth tugged again, faintly amused.
"If you think that was strong," he said, "you haven't seen much."
Alisa blinked. "That wasn't strong?"
He laughed—not mockingly, but like she'd said something sincerely cute.
"That," he said, "was me doing my job while past my prime."
Past his—
She stared. "How old are you?"
He ignored the question with a practiced ease that told her she wasn't the first to ask and wouldn't be the last.
"You want the truth?" he asked. "This world isn't your old one. Out here, people do things your head doesn't have room for yet."
Alisa's stomach tightened at your old one. She didn't like the way he said it like it was obvious.
He watched her reaction, then continued before she could spin out.
"Everything here starts with elements," he said.
Alisa's eyes narrowed slightly. "Like… magic."
"Like blood," he corrected. "You're born with one. Most people never awaken it. They live their lives as if they're ordinary, and die as if that's all they were."
He lifted a hand and started counting, steady and clear.
"Flame. Tide. Gale. Stone. Frost. Bolt. Flora. Metal."
His hand paused.
"The first eight," he said, "are what most awakeners end up with, if they awaken at all."
Alisa's gaze flicked to the basalt cylinder behind him.
"…Stone," she murmured, piecing it together.
He nodded. "Stone."
Then he held up another finger.
"Shadow. Radiance. Spirit. Aeon."
Alisa repeated them silently, because she didn't trust herself to say anything wrong.
He watched her take it in, then spoke the last one quieter.
"Void."
Alisa felt the word go through her like a cold needle.
"Void is—" she started.
"A myth," he finished, "according to most people."
He said it like he didn't personally enjoy myths.
"Because there's only one known being rumored to have it," he added. "And when something is that rare, people either worship it or pretend it isn't real."
Alisa's fingers tightened around the fabric in her lap.
And, uninvited, a small image flickered in her mind—paper-white hair drifting in heat that shouldn't exist, a girl who looked too young and too calm in a place that tried to eat grief. Iris.
Alisa shoved the thought away before it could grow teeth.
"…So you're Stone," she said again, quieter.
He nodded.
"And this region?" she asked. "It's… dedicated to Stone too?"
He leaned forward a little. "You're learning."
"Yes," he said. "This stretch of land belongs under Stone. People around here tend to awaken Stone more often than elsewhere. The desert behaves the way it does because of where it sits. The ground remembers what rules it's under."
Alisa swallowed. Her voice came out smaller. "So what I saw outside—"
Wasn't an accident. Wasn't just "weather." It was a rule.
She remembered what Iris had said—his territory… weird creations—and the way she'd sounded annoyed, like the horror was someone's habit.
Alisa's skin prickled.
"And the gods…" she said quietly, the words slipping out before she could stop them. "There's a god for each."
The old man's eyes narrowed slightly, not hostile—alert.
"That's what you've heard," he said.
It wasn't a confirmation. It wasn't a denial, either.
Alisa hated how carefully he chose his words. It made her feel like there were cliffs around every topic and she couldn't see the edge until she stepped off.
She rubbed her thumb over the edge of her pendant without thinking.
He leaned back again, studying her like he'd decided something.
"Listen," he said. "Whatever you are, whatever you were before—none of it matters if you die out here. And you will, if you stay around this Reach too long without understanding how it works."
Alisa's throat tightened. "So what do I do?"
He didn't hesitate.
"You rest," he said. "And in the morning, you head south. Suraam."
"The capital," Alisa whispered, remembering the map.
He nodded. "You'll find answers there. Or at least people who can point you toward them without trying to gut you for your bag."
Alisa flinched at that, hugging her winter bundle closer.
The old man's gaze flicked to the stairs.
"Get as much rest as you can," he said. "Tomorrow will be worse than tonight in a different way."
Alisa stood slowly, like her bones had turned to sand. "And if something happens again?"
He gave her a look that was half tired, half sharp.
"Then you bolt the door and let me do my job," he said. "That's why I'm here."
Alisa nodded, and it felt like agreeing to a reality she didn't want.
She climbed the stairs with her bundle in her arms, key heavy in her pocket, lungs finally remembering how to breathe.
Inside her room, she locked the bolt, left the key in the lock like he'd ordered, and set her winter clothes on the chair.
Then she lay down.
Her body was exhausted, but her mind wouldn't stop replaying the sand moving with intent and the old man moving faster than thought.
For a long time, she stared into darkness and listened to the inn creak.
Eventually, despite everything, sleep took her again—uneven, reluctant—
but it came.