Kar'thessa's mouth hit the sand like a guillotine.
The dunes exploded upward. The impact threw grit into my eyes, into my throat, into every fold of my robe. I tasted iron. The ground shuddered so hard my knees nearly gave out.
Captain Edrin did not hesitate.
He moved first, not away, but toward the worst angle, like he was placing himself between us and the bite that could erase the entire team. His sword cleared its sheath with a hard metallic rasp. The blade looked ordinary until it caught the light. Then the edge shimmered faintly, as if the air around it had learned to sharpen itself.
"Tomas," Edrin snapped. "Anchor."
Tomas slammed his palm into the sand.
A ring of pale markings flared around him, not bright, not flashy, but steady. The runes sank into the ground like poured ink. The air tightened. The wind shifted, losing its teeth where the circle spread.
"Stay inside it!" Tomas barked, voice suddenly louder. "If you leave the boundary, I can't hold you."
Lyra was already moving, sprinting sideways with her bow out, trying to pull the worm's attention away from the crate and the carrier. The carrier, bless whoever trained him, kept low and backed up in measured steps, gripping the frame like it was a lifeline.
Kar'thessa rose higher.
Her body came out in thick segments plated with cracked armor. Each plate had gouges and old scars, as if other monsters had tried and failed to eat her first. Sand poured off her like water. Inside the open throat, ridged teeth spiraled inward. When she breathed, the heat rolled out in waves.
My Failure Converter kept flashing red at the edge of my vision.
Not a suggestion. Not a warning.
A declaration that something here was wrong enough to count.
Edrin sprinted, then planted his foot and drove his sword into the side of the worm's mouth as it dipped. Steel met armored flesh with a sound like breaking pottery.
Dark blood sprayed.
Not red. Not black. Something between, thick and glittering, like ground metal mixed with oil. It splattered across Edrin's sleeves and the sand around him. The smell was sharp, mineral-heavy, almost burning.
Kar'thessa shrieked.
The sound slammed through my bones.
Edrin yanked the blade free and rolled, barely avoiding a snapping jaw that could have taken his head. He came up on one knee, calm, steady, already calculating the next angle.
"Tomas!" he called. "Now!"
Tomas's hands moved fast, seals pulled from his pouch and pressed into the sand. The markings expanded, and for a moment the air inside the circle felt thicker, protective. A pressure settled over my skin, like someone had draped a heavy cloak over my shoulders.
My shaking eased.
My breathing steadied.
Not healed. Not stronger.
Just stabilized.
Support without miracles.
Tomas looked pale, sweat already running down his temple. No one had skills yet. No healing. No magic that closed wounds in a blink. What he was doing was brute control over the body, forcing it to keep functioning when it wanted to collapse.
Lyra's arrow struck Kar'thessa's upper plate near her eye ridge. It bounced, snapping in half.
Lyra didn't curse. She adjusted and fired again, aiming for the softer seams between plates. The second arrow sank in, shallow but enough to draw blood. Kar'thessa twisted toward her, enraged.
Good. Lyra had her attention.
Bad. Kar'thessa moved fast for something that big.
The worm surged sideways, not slithering but bursting through sand as if it was air. The ground split open behind Lyra. Her foot slipped. She recovered, but the next tremor stole her balance again.
Edrin saw it.
He sprinted, faster than I expected a man in his gear to move. His steps were economical, no wasted motion, no panic. He reached Lyra in two strides and shoved her forward with one hand, then raised his shield and took the brunt of Kar'thessa's snap.
The bite hit the shield.
Metal screamed.
Edrin slid back several feet, boots carving trenches in the sand. The shield bent inward. Blood ran down his forearm where the impact drove the rim into his skin.
He didn't fall.
His steel-gray eyes stayed steady.
"Oathbound Vanguard," I thought, the words from his background suddenly making sense in the worst way.
He was built to hold.
Kar'thessa reared again, preparing to strike.
I moved without thinking, trying to get to the side, trying to help, trying to be useful.
The sand beneath me collapsed.
A sinkhole, sudden and hungry, pulled my legs down. My arms flailed. I grabbed at air, then at grit, then at nothing.
I heard Tomas shout my name.
I didn't have time to answer.
Kar'thessa's shadow fell over me.
Her mouth opened.
I looked up into spiraling teeth and darkness, and for a brief, stupid moment my mind tried to measure the distance, the angle, the chance.
There was none.
The bite came down.
Pain flashed white, then red, then nothing.
My world cut off.
Then it snapped back.
I gasped, sitting upright, sand in my mouth, heart pounding. The wind hit my face. The heat punched my lungs. I was alive again, a few breaths earlier, near Tomas's circle, exactly where I had been before the sinkhole grabbed me.
My hands were shaking.
My body was whole.
My mind wasn't.
I didn't have the luxury to process. I forced my feet to move, staying inside the boundary this time, because Tomas's field was the only reason my legs weren't giving out.
Kar'thessa's mouth hit again.
Edrin took the hit on the shield again, then pivoted, using the impact to angle his blade into the seam beneath the worm's jaw. He drove the sword upward with brutal precision.
Blood rained.
Kar'thessa screamed louder.
The scream didn't just hurt. It made the sand vibrate. It made my eyes water. It made my teeth ache.
Lyra fired into the open wound Edrin created, arrow after arrow, each one disappearing into dark flesh. Tomas kept his circle stable, hands trembling as he reinforced it again and again.
The carrier dragged the crate farther back, step by step, face tight with fear.
I tried to watch everything at once.
The worm's timing.
Edrin's position.
Lyra's angle.
Tomas's strain.
My own useless legs.
Failure Converter pulsed red, feeding me small insights that came from watching everything fail. It showed me patterns in Kar'thessa's movement, the way she favored the left when she reared, the way her plates flexed near the throat right before she snapped.
I opened my mouth to shout a warning.
Sand hit my throat.
I coughed.
That cough cost me.
A tremor rolled under the boundary. The ground lifted, then dropped. I lost footing for half a second.
Kar'thessa's tail, thick as a fallen tower, whipped across the sand.
It hit me squarely in the ribs.
I heard something crack.
The world spun.
I flew.
I landed hard enough that my lungs collapsed into silence. I tried to inhale and couldn't. I rolled onto my side, choking on nothing, vision narrowing to a black tunnel.
Tomas was shouting again. Lyra's voice cut through, sharp and panicked.
Edrin's boots pounded closer.
I saw his silhouette tilt toward me, reaching.
Too late.
My body failed.
Darkness took me again, quiet and complete.
Then the world reset.
Breath returned in a violent gasp.
I was back inside Tomas's circle again, seconds earlier, ribs unbroken, pain still lingering in my mind like a bruise that wouldn't fade.
Two deaths.
And the fight had barely started.
I could feel it in the way Kar'thessa moved. In the way Edrin's arms were already heavy. In the way Tomas's face was going gray from strain. In the way Lyra kept firing even when her fingers began to bleed from the bowstring.
This wasn't going to end quickly.
It wasn't going to end clean.
And I knew, with the cold certainty Failure Converter gave me, that I would die many more times before we found a way through it.
By the time the pattern finally started to form in my mind, by the time I began to understand her rhythm, the number in the back of my head had already climbed.
Not one. Not two.
Twenty-three.
And Kar'thessa was still rising, mouth opening again, ready to swallow the whole road if it meant crushing whatever disturbance had called her here.
~~~
Kar'thessa surged again, and this time I didn't look at her.
I looked at everything else.
The sand.
The timing.
The way Edrin shifted his weight a breath before impact.
The way Lyra inhaled before releasing her arrow.
The fraction of a second Tomas needed before reinforcing his field.
Failure Converter burned behind my eyes, not like pain, but like pressure. Like something inside my skull was tightening a grip around every failed outcome and squeezing meaning out of it.
I finally understood.
Failure Converter didn't give me power.
It gave me authority over failure.
Not success. Not victory.
Failure.
Every time something went wrong, the skill harvested it. Not the event itself, but the gap between what should have happened and what did.
Kar'thessa snapped again.
Edrin raised his shield, but I already knew the angle was wrong.
"LEFT!" I shouted.
My voice came out raw, tearing my throat.
Edrin didn't question it. He twisted at the last instant, shield angling just enough that the bite slid instead of crushing. Teeth scraped metal. Sparks flew. The impact still hurled him back, but it didn't break his arm this time.
Failure averted.
The pressure behind my eyes spiked.
Something clicked.
A translucent window slammed open in front of me, not hovering politely, but anchoring itself to my vision.
[ACTIVE AUTHORITY: FAILURE CONVERTER]
[Momentary Override Granted]
I didn't have time to read further.
Kar'thessa reared, wounded but far from slowed. Her throat plates flexed, preparing for another devastating lunge.
Lyra fired.
The arrow hit… and snapped uselessly against hardened armor.
That was a failure.
I felt it.
The moment it happened, the world paused.
Not stopped.
Paused.
Like reality itself had stumbled.
For a heartbeat, everything became wrong in the same direction.
I raised my hand without thinking.
The air in front of me folded inward, not exploding, not flashing, just… compressing. As if someone had taken the concept of "missed shot" and forced it to resolve differently.
The broken arrow twitched.
Then it jerked sideways.
Not physically redirected. That wasn't what happened.
The failure was redirected.
The arrow fragment embedded itself into the seam beneath Kar'thessa's jaw, exactly where Lyra had been aiming but couldn't reach.
Blood erupted.
Kar'thessa screamed.
The sound was different this time. Not rage. Pain.
Tomas stared at me, eyes wide. "What did you just—"
"I don't know," I said, and it was the truth. "But do it again."
That sentence cost me more than I expected.
My knees buckled.
The world lurched.
Failure Converter didn't come free. It demanded payment.
My vision blurred at the edges, black creeping in. My heartbeat felt uneven, too loud in my ears. My body felt heavier, like gravity had quietly doubled when I wasn't looking.
I forced myself upright.
Kar'thessa thrashed, tail slamming into the sand, carving trenches meters deep. The shockwave threw Tomas off balance. His field flickered.
That flicker was another failure.
I caught it.
The world bent again.
For half a second, Tomas's failing support didn't collapse.
It redirected.
The weakening force bled into the sand instead of the people inside the boundary. The ground cracked, but we stayed standing.
Tomas gasped, dropping to one knee. Blood ran from his nose.
"That's it," he wheezed. "I can't hold much longer."
Neither could I.
My arms trembled violently now. Each breath scraped my lungs raw. It felt like my body was trying to shut down systems one by one, starting with anything unnecessary.
Failure Converter pulsed again, weaker this time.
It wasn't infinite.
It was burning fuel I didn't have.
Edrin roared and charged, blade glowing faintly as he drove it into Kar'thessa's wounded throat seam. The strike was perfect.
Still not enough.
The worm didn't die.
She recoiled, furious, blood pouring, but her bulk was too vast, her life too deeply rooted in the land. She slammed down again, crushing sand, burying Edrin up to the knees.
I saw the next failure before it happened.
Her tail.
"DUCK!" I shouted.
Edrin dropped flat.
The tail passed overhead, missing his skull by inches.
That warning cost me dearly.
My vision went white.
I tasted copper.
I felt my heart stutter.
Failure Converter tried to activate again, and this time my body rebelled.
A sharp, tearing pain ripped through my chest. I collapsed to one knee, then both.
The system window flickered violently.
[ACTIVE AUTHORITY STRAIN: CRITICAL]
[HOST CONDITION: UNSTABLE]
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't focus.
I couldn't stand.
Kar'thessa was wounded. Slowed. Bleeding heavily.
Still alive.
Still too much.
I laughed weakly, the sound choking out of me. "So this is… not enough…"
The skill didn't argue.
It had never promised victory.
Only leverage.
Behind us, somewhere buried beneath rocks and cloth and wards, the carrier and the crate stayed hidden, untouched, unnoticed. Whatever was sealed inside remained silent, as if watching.
Edrin fought on.
Lyra fired until her quiver emptied.
Tomas dragged himself upright again, teeth clenched, forcing one last reinforcement into the ground.
And I sat there in the sand, shaking, half-blind, understanding something terrifyingly clear.
Failure Converter could tilt impossible odds.
But it could not carry the weight of a monster meant to guard a god.
Not yet.
Not alone.
And Kar'thessa, Queen of the Sand, was far from finished.