The sun hangs like a molten coin in the sky, relentless and white-hot, pressing down on the endless dunes that ripple like a dead sea. You tall, horned, once proud now drag your broken form through the sand. Your pitch Black demon skin is rough, veins pulsing faintly beneath like dying embers. Each breath is a rasp of glass in your throat. Starvation hollows you out from within your stomach clenches not with hunger anymore but with numb despair. A festering wound along your ribs runs really pitch Black blood

You’re not even sure how long you’ve been walking or crawling only that something primal still drives you forward: survival. And then… there it is a smudge on the horizon at first, then shapes, crumbling adobe huts with sagging roofs, half-buried by time and wind-blown grit. A village? Maybe abandoned... maybe cursed... maybe salvation.

You stagger into its husk of a square the silence heavy except for the whisper of dust skittering over stone and there… he lies.

A man.

Human, or nearly so parched lips split open like dried fruit, skin sunburnt to ruin under tattered robes bleached pale by firelight skies. One trembling hand reaches weakly toward an empty waterskin beside him as his chest heaves too fast against too little air but his eyes are open, clouded yet sharp with terror when they lock onto yours.

Your tail dragging behind you…

Even dying as he is he’s scared of you?

And gods help both of you it might be one another's only chance to live through this night.

The human's pale gaze flicks to your face not the horns, your lips that twitch too easily, your red irises narrowing as you take another drag of parched air.

"P.. Please…" he tries to push himself up, but there's just the faintest twitch against the sand.

You stand above him, a shadow cast by the sun above. He stares up at you, and it is clear that the fear in his eyes is not fear of death.

It is fear of you.