The desert sun bled across the sky like an open wound, setting the world on fire as Calder Nash pushed open the creaking saloon doors of Deadman's Hollow. Smoke and sweat clung to the walls like bad memories, and all conversation stopped the second he stepped inside.
Every pair of eyes—drunk, dusty, or deadly—turned toward him.
He didn't care.
His boots thudded slowly across the splintered floorboards. He passed gamblers, gunslingers, and a piano man who never stopped playing, even when blood spilled. Calder's long duster trailed behind him, coated in dirt and dried blood. The wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but not enough to hide the jagged scar running from his temple to his jaw.
He was a ghost from the past—and someone recognized him.
"You shoulda stayed dead, Nash," growled a voice.
It came from a big man in a bloodstained apron—Reed Harlan, once a petty thief, now a hired gun for the Blackthorn Gang. He stood beside the bar with two others, one of them already unholstering his pistol.
Calder didn't blink. "I'll leave when I finish my drink. If that's too much trouble, I'll pour it over your corpse."
The tension cracked like thunder. Guns were drawn.
Three men. One Calder.
The room held its breath.
Calder moved.
His revolver sang death. One shot, then another, then a third—each one fast and deliberate. Reed fell face-first into the bar. The second man slumped against a whiskey barrel. The third dropped his weapon before his body even hit the floor.
Then silence. Only the piano continued to play—a ghostly, out-of-tune melody that made the dead seem like part of the furniture.
Calder walked to the bar, stepped over Reed's corpse, and picked up a half-full glass of bourbon.
"Now," he muttered, sipping, "we can talk."
A thin man in a red vest emerged from the back—Luther Cain, the saloon owner. He looked like a weasel who'd borrowed his cousin's mustache.
"You're bringing hellfire to my door, Nash," he hissed. "The Blackthorn Gang's got men in every damn town from here to the canyon."
"Good," Calder said. "Makes hunting easier."
Luther leaned closer. "They're sayin' Elias Vane's back. Alive. You sure about this revenge trail? He's not the same man. He's worse."
Calder stared at the empty glass in his hand. His jaw tightened.
"Neither am I."
He tossed a silver coin on the bar. "For the mess."
Luther caught it with shaking hands. "They'll come for you."
Calder turned, his duster swaying like a cloak of shadows. "Let them."
As he stepped outside, the wind howled through the empty streets. The sky darkened with more than just dusk. Calder knew what was coming.
He had started something that couldn't be undone.
And vengeance never left survivors.
The moon cast a pale glow over Deadman's Hollow, silvering the rooftops like old bones. Calder Nash rode out just before midnight, his stallion's hooves muffled by the dusty ground. He didn't look back. That town had too many ghosts already.
The wind whispered like a voice in his ear. Some would call it paranoia. Calder called it survival.
He was heading east—toward a place the maps had long stopped naming. Coyote Ridge. A shithole of a settlement run by outlaws and fear, last known location of a Blackthorn informant.
But before he'd ridden a mile from town, he saw her.
A silhouette, waiting near an abandoned well, wrapped in the shadows of a dying tree.
She didn't flinch as he rode closer.
"You followed me." His voice was gravel and steel.
The girl stepped forward, moonlight catching her face. Maybe nineteen. Maybe twenty-one. Dirty boots, torn trousers, a revolver slung low at her hip—but it was the crimson bandana around her neck that caught Calder's eye. It wasn't decoration.
It was a signal.
"You left three bodies behind," she said. "Blackthorn will double the bounty on your head. Triple it after Coyote Ridge."
"I'm counting on it."
She crossed her arms. "You don't even remember me, do you?"
Calder scanned her features. There was something in her eyes—rage and heartbreak tangled together.
"No."
"I was ten when you killed my father." Her voice cracked. "You shot him in front of me. Said he was a traitor. Left me screaming in the ashes."
Calder's jaw tightened. "Then why are you here?"
"To see if the stories were true." She pulled the revolver from her hip and aimed it at his chest. Her hands shook. "That Calder Nash ain't a man. Just a shadow in the shape of one."
He didn't reach for his gun. Didn't move at all.
"Then pull the trigger," he said.
The girl hesitated. Her finger twitched. But the shot never came.
"Damn you," she whispered. "I don't know if I want you dead or want to see you kill Elias Vane."
Calder finally moved. He dismounted, his boots hitting the dirt with a heavy thud.
"What's your name?"
"Rhea. Rhea Maddox."
"I didn't know your father had a daughter."
"He didn't know I could shoot," she said coldly, lowering the revolver.
Silence stretched between them.
"You ride with me," Calder said, "you don't slow me down. You don't ask questions. And if Vane gets to you—he won't show mercy."
"I don't want mercy," she said, stepping beside him. "I want revenge."
He studied her for a moment. Something in her reminded him of who he used to be—before the world turned to ash. Before Vane's betrayal. Before everything was taken.
"Then saddle up, Maddox," he muttered. "We've got blood to spill."
As they rode into the night, a pair of eyes watched from the cliffs above. A Blackthorn scout, silent and cloaked, marked the two figures vanishing into the horizon.
He reached for his whistle to alert the others—
—and never blew it.
A blade slit his throat before sound could escape.
The Whisperer had arrived.