The desert night clung to the world like a second skin — dry, dense, and heavy with the lingering heat of a day long past. The stars above stretched in numberless rivers across the black vault of Varethis’s sky, their cold, indifferent light bathing the cracked earth below in a pale glow. ProlixalParagon stood at the edge of the gathered Vermillion Troupe, his sharp, keen ears flicking at each sound that rode the restless wind.

  Behind them, the salt flats shimmered ghost-pale under the moon. Beyond those lay the border to Draggor, and with it, the line no human soldier dared cross. The world on this side of the divide felt different, though perhaps it was only the absence of fear making it so.

  Twenty-four vardos and three Conestoga wagons rested in a loose crescent atop a shallow rise of stone and scrub. Each wagon was painted in bright colors, adorned with beadwork and crescent charms, their heavy canvas sides catching the starlight. The scent of dried herbs and old spice clung to them, a nomadic lifeline carried from one unforgiving land to another.

  The troupe had gathered in the shadow of a weathered outcropping, the flicker of shielded lanterns throwing long, uncertain shapes across the sand. Lyra, her silver fur gleaming, leaned heavily on her gnarled staff as she addressed them, her voice that dry, papery rasp that always seemed to hush the world.

  “We are alive,” she began, and it was neither triumph nor relief in her words — merely a statement of undeniable fact.

  Marx stood off to one side, a grim sentinel, arms folded across his broad chest. The children they’d rescued huddled in a tight knot near Ralyria, who, for all her inhuman grace and metal-forged form, had softened in the days since taking up their cause. The Soohan elves lingered at the fringe of the assembly — tall, dusk-hued, and silent, their narrow faces reflecting the wary courtesy born of old grudges.

  ProlixalParagon stepped forward, clearing his throat.

  “Ralyria,” he began, his voice catching slightly before he forced a steadiness into it. “That spear — you handle it well. Didn’t realize you’d taken to weapons.”

  Ralyria glanced down at the weapon in her grasp, the moonlight catching on the edge of its polished iron head. She gave a small, almost bashful tilt of her head. “Mevra taught me,” she said quietly. “For stage fights. Mock duels for the little ones. Didn’t think it would ever matter.”

  “Seems it did,” Marx muttered, a dry note of approval in his voice.

  A Soohan elf stepped forward then — Saelith, his moonsteel cloak stirring in the wind. His face was the unmarked elegance of his kind, though fatigue showed in the deepening lines around his eyes.

  “You need not linger here,” Saelith said, his Soohan-accented words smooth as running water. “You have safe passage in Soohan. There’s a village — Yendral’s Hollow — two days north along the brackish stream. Supplies. Shelter. No laws forbidding Fennicians, Goblins, or Red Fox caravans.”

  Lyra’s eyes, ancient and piercing, fixed on him. “And you would guide us to this place?”

  “I would,” he confirmed. “Or leave markers for your trail, should my duty call me elsewhere. This land… does not forget those who cross it without care.”

  A murmur ran through the troupe — one of weary hope, of deep-buried suspicion. The Kingdom of Soohan was known for its disdain of Draggor’s harsh castes and oppressive laws, but old scars ran deep in folk like theirs.

  ProlixalParagon drew a slow breath, the desert air dry and rough in his throat. “We’ve no welcome left in Draggor. Soohan may be the last place left to us.”

  Lyra nodded once. “Then we go to Yendral’s Hollow.”

  A flicker of relief crossed Saelith’s features. He gestured to one of his kin, who stepped forward with a bundle of wrapped parchment. “Markers,” Saelith explained, unrolling them to reveal delicate inked sigils, a language of shapes and lines meant to be hung from trees and stones. “Should you lose the trail, follow these.”

  ProlixalParagon took one, the symbol sharp and clean beneath his furred fingers. “We’ll see them, even in moonlight?”

  “They’ll catch the wind,” Saelith said softly, “and the wind remembers its friends.”

  Lyra dismissed the gathering with a soft motion of her hand. “Make ready. We travel before dawn.”

  The crowd dispersed, vardos creaking as folk returned to their wagons. ProlixalParagon lingered a moment, his gaze drawn to the salt flats and the darkness beyond. He knew — felt in the marrow of his bones — that Dustreach would not forget them. Nor forgive.

  Ralyria appeared at his side, spear in hand, her silhouette sharp against the starlit sand. “Do you think it’ll be safe?” she asked quietly.

  ProlixalParagon glanced at her, noting how the lantern light caught the faint etchings in her forged skin. “Nowhere is safe,” he said, “but anywhere is better than where we left.”

  He looked again at her spear. “You did well tonight, Ralyria. Mevra would be proud.”

  A flicker of something unreadable crossed her face. “I never thought… It was meant for stories. Not blood.”

  “Then tell a new story,” ProlixalParagon said. “One worth fighting for.”

  Ralyria nodded once. In the distance, a jackal’s cry rose, thin and mournful.

  The desert wind shifted, carrying with it the clean, sharp scent of salt and sage. The vardos began to stir, lanterns doused one by one, leaving the gathering cloaked in darkness. The stars wheeled overhead, and the road to Yendral’s Hollow waited.

  ProlixalParagon flexed his hands, feeling the worn leather of his gloves. Tomorrow would be another fight. Another crossing. But tonight… for the first time in too long, they could sleep beneath open sky without fear of chains.

  And for now — that was enough.

  Lyra moved with the surety of one who had walked through too many nights like this, her silver fur catching the pale light of twin moons as she passed between the wagons. ProlixalParagon fell into step beside her, his eyes constantly scanning the shadows beyond their flickering lanterns. Every gust of dry wind felt like a whispered warning, and every shifting shape of fabric seemed a lurking threat.

  “No sense leaving if the wheels won’t hold,” Lyra murmured without looking at him, her voice low as a sigh in tall grass.

  ProlixalParagon nodded, ears twitching at a distant, sharp crack — a branch, or perhaps a stone shifting under weight. He gripped the hilt of his dagger and followed as Lyra approached the first vardo. Its painted sides bore old stories in flaking color: a white serpent coiled through desert grass, a trio of moons rising over dunes.

  Inside, a Goblin mother cradled her kit to her chest. Her yellow eyes, glassy with exhaustion, locked onto Lyra as she entered. “Is it over?” the mother rasped.

  “For now,” Lyra answered. She crouched, her weathered hands checking the child’s limbs, brushing away dust and dried blood at the boy’s temple. “No break. Keep him warm. He’ll sleep deep tonight.”

  The Goblin woman nodded, clutching the boy tighter.

  ProlixalParagon stepped to the wheel well, running a hand over the axle. A fresh chip in the iron banding, but it would hold. He made a quiet note of it, then moved on.

  They passed from wagon to wagon, the work grim and necessary. A young Fennician, her tawny fur matted with sweat and soot, winced as Lyra checked her shoulder. “It was the fall,” the girl muttered, voice trembling. “When the wagon lurched. I held on — I did—”

  “You did,” Lyra said softly. “And you’ll mend.”

  She drew a small satchel of ground leaf salve from her sash, pressing it into the girl’s hands. “For the bruising. Stay near your elder sister.”

  The girl nodded, grateful, and vanished into the shadows of the next wagon.

  ProlixalParagon inspected the harnesses where oxen stood tethered, restless and stamping at the salt-rimmed earth. The beasts’ hides shone with sweat, nostrils flaring at every shifting scent on the wind.

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  “Ruts along the north side,” he muttered to Lyra as she joined him. “Wheels cracked through the crust. One of the Conestogas nearly bucked its yoke.”

  Lyra’s frown deepened. “Marx said the terrain would hold.”

  ProlixalParagon shrugged. “It didn’t.”

  Lyra turned, eyes sweeping the ridge line. The border loomed too close behind them. Draggor men wouldn’t cross tonight, but men desperate enough could. And worse things roamed these wastes.

  A sharp call rose from one of the Soohan elves stationed at the outer perimeter — a short, warbling whistle that meant all clear, for now.

  “They’ll come again,” ProlixalParagon murmured.

  “Of course they will,” Lyra replied. “But we won’t be here when they do.”

  They moved to the last of the vardos — the elder’s own. Its sides were painted in lunar phases, a motif of silver and deep blue. The rear axle bore a split in the wood.

  “Damn it,” ProlixalParagon cursed under his breath, crouching to run his fingers along the fissure. Not wide enough to fail tonight, but it would need tending before they reached any civilized road.

  “We can spare a brace,” Lyra murmured, already thinking three steps ahead. “Ralyria’s spear haft is good ash. She’ll lend it.”

  ProlixalParagon raised a brow. “She just blooded that spear.”

  “She can blood another,” Lyra said sharply. “This wagon rolls before dawn or we leave it to the dunes.”

  A flicker of bitter humor tugged at the corner of ProlixalParagon’s mouth. “Spoken like a true fox elder.”

  Lyra snorted, the sound brittle in the night. “I’ve buried too many kits to coddle wagons or sentiment. Survival isn’t poetry, boy.”

  They shared a brief, grim look before moving again, tallying the wagons, counting heads. Marx appeared near the Conestogas, his heavy gait unmistakable even in the dark.

  “Saltline holds,” he reported gruffly. “No riders.”

  “For now,” Lyra said.

  Marx grunted. “Kids’ll be thirsty before dawn.”

  “I know.”

  The elder turned to ProlixalParagon. “Once we move, you’re on point. If that Soohan elf leads us into a pit, I want you spotting it before the oxen’s hooves find it.”

  “Understood,” ProlixalParagon said.

  Lyra raised her voice then, addressing the scattered remnants of the troupe. “Two hours. Pack what’s left, lash it tight. No fires. No singing. Keep the little ones inside. We ride at false dawn.”

  A murmur of acknowledgment passed among the troupe — bone-tired, half-broken, but alive.

  ProlixalParagon flexed his hands once more, feeling the grit of dust and blood beneath his claws. The night pressed close, and Varethis watched with eyes unseen.

  Soon, they would move. And gods willing — survive.

  The night bled on.

  It seemed to slip from them like sand through calloused hands — one moment a thick, smothering thing, heavy with the scent of sweat, old blood, and cracked leather, and the next a thin, brittle husk. The desert wind kept low to the earth, hissing through dry tufts of brush and over the salt flats, carrying with it the faint, metallic tang of far-off places and things best left unnamed.

  Time stretched, lost in the slow and steady work of survival.

  The last lanterns were shuttered, their glow snuffed to embers. The vardos, one by one, creaked into formation. ProlixalParagon could feel it in his bones — that restless anticipation that settled before a flight. Not quite fear. Not quite relief. The desert sky began to soften at the edges, a stain of deep indigo giving way to a faint, sickle-shaped smudge of ash-gray along the eastern horizon.

  A false dawn. But it was enough.

  “Time,” Lyra rasped, her voice like dry grass scraping stone. She didn’t shout. She didn’t need to. Those who needed to hear did.

  ProlixalParagon moved to the front of the line, the vardo wheels already groaning against the earth as they shifted into motion. The oxen snorted and stamped, uneasy but willing, sensing the urgency in every taut line of harness leather and every sharp word from the drivers.

  He felt Marx’s presence behind him like a boulder, steady and wordless. Ralyria, pale in the last of the starlight, paced alongside the second vardo — no spear now, only a makeshift staff of knotty scrubwood, the haft freshly lashed with rough cord.

  The world was not yet awake, but it was watching.

  The Soohan elves had slipped ahead, their figures vanishing into the low hills beyond the salt flats like ghosts in the mist. Only the faint shimmer of their trail markers remained — cloth sigils tied to scrub and stones, catching the faintest predawn breeze. ProlixalParagon’s sharp eyes marked them in the gloom, each one a promise and a risk.

  The border still lay perilously close at their backs. Though Draggor’s men would not willingly cross the saltline, desperation and vengeance made fools of soldiers. ProlixalParagon’s ears twitched at every distant noise — the too-sudden crack of shifting earth, the mournful call of a lone jackal, the whisper of wagon wheels.

  The troupe moved in silence, the only sounds the dull thud of oxen hooves and the soft, constant creak of wood. No one spoke. Even the kits, wrapped tight in furs and pressed between weary adults, made no sound.

  It was Lyra who broke the hush. She drew alongside ProlixalParagon, her gait slower than it had been hours ago, but steady. “You see anything, boy?” she asked without looking at him.

  He scanned the distant rise where the land swelled and broke toward the brackish stream. A flicker of pale fabric — another Soohan marker — and nothing more.

  “Not yet.”

  “‘Yet’ is the right word.”

  The silence settled again. Time crawled forward, marked only by the creeping light in the sky, a watery, tentative gray now edging the horizon.

  And then — a scent.

  ProlixalParagon’s nose twitched. The unmistakable scent of water. Not the acrid brine of the salt flats but something greener, fouler, touched with the iron tinge of slow-moving stream water. He straightened, ears pricking. Ahead, the land dipped, and the ghostly remnants of what passed for a road veered left around a narrow cleft in the stone.

  A shape materialized near the bend.

  For a moment, his pulse hammered — the silhouette was tall, cloaked, weapon in hand. But as it stepped fully into view, the moonsteel sheen of Saelith’s armor caught the weak dawn light.

  The elf raised a hand in silent greeting.

  “This is where your gods hold no dominion,” Saelith called, voice low but carrying. “No more banners. No more kings. Yendral’s Hollow lies beyond the next rise.”

  ProlixalParagon felt a tightness in his chest he hadn’t realized was there loosen, just a fraction.

  Behind them, the desert still sprawled, vast and empty, but every instinct told him it was not so empty as it seemed.

  Lyra spoke before he could. “Get them moving, boy. We’ve bled enough in this damned waste.”

  He nodded and gave a sharp, slicing whistle — a signal relayed down the line by wagoneers and elders alike. The vardos picked up speed, wheels rattling over rough stone and hard-packed earth. A child whimpered somewhere in the line, quickly hushed.

  And the troupe moved.

  Over the rise, the landscape changed. Sparse scrub gave way to stunted, twisted trees — their gnarled branches clutching at the sky like crooked fingers. The brackish stream gleamed dull and still beneath them, a ribbon of murk cutting through the badlands.

  Beyond it, clustered in a hollow flanked by weathered stone and crooked trees, the faint lights of Yendral’s Hollow burned.

  Not much. But enough.

  A flicker of cautious hope stirred in ProlixalParagon’s chest. He allowed it, for a breath, before smothering it with the wariness long learned. There were worse things than soldiers in border towns.

  As the first of the vardos crossed the stream and the horizon behind them turned the color of old blood, ProlixalParagon felt the wind shift.

  And somewhere in the far-off distance, a horn called.

  Fainter now. But not gone.