The desert unfurled before them like a scorched tapestry—mile after merciless mile of ochre dunes braided by the wind and stippled with glinting quartz that caught the morning light like the eyes of buried gods. The sun had not yet reached its full wrath, but already it glared low on the horizon, a molten coin half-sunken in the east, casting long shadows that danced like wraiths across the rippling sands.

Azlan rode at the head of the column, black turban veiled tight across the lower half of his face, the long tail of it trailing behind him like the banner of a fallen dynasty. His mount, a towering crimson-brown stallion bred from Nahrane war stock, pounded the sand with precision and fury. Dust curled from its hooves with every stride, rising in brief plumes that swirled and dissolved in the wake of the riders behind.

They numbered thirty-seven that day—the leanest, most battle-hardened remnant of the Dark Horses, cloaked in varying shades of earth and ash. Their armor was scavenged, modified, worn like second skin; no two were alike, yet all bore the same sigil, seared or painted or etched: a black horse rearing beneath a crescent moon, both crossed by the jagged line of a lightning bolt. Some had affixed it to their helms, others branded it into leather bracers or tattooed it on forearms that clenched the reins like the necks of enemies.

The wind was dry, and it sang low, whispering secrets through the broken teeth of distant cliffs. It carried with it the faint scent of myrrh from some shattered altar to the south, and a darker undercurrent: iron and rot—the memory of old slaughter. Vultures wheeled high above them, lazy at first, then eager. The sand, stirred by the hoofbeats, danced in small spirals, leaping into the folds of their scarves, clinging to lashes, nesting in joints and cracks of scale and mail.

Azlan’s eyes—those haunted amber embers—narrowed behind the slit of his mask as he surveyed the horizon. A ruin lay ahead, half-drowned in sand like a drowning man gasping for breath.