The dunes were wrong.
Furiosa saw it before the others—the scars in the sand, not from wind or time, but tread and teeth. The path was wide and burned, a corridor of ruin left by something bigger than any war rig she'd ever seen.
"The Revenant came through here," Toast whispered.
They all knew it. You could feel it in the wind—thick with ash, salt, and something iron. Fear, maybe. Even the engines seemed to choke on it.
Max crouched beside the tracks, fingertips brushing the edge of a melted hubcap buried in scorched glass. Black Silence had passed through no more than a day ago.
"Why follow him?" Max asked flatly.
Furiosa didn't look at him. "Because no one else would think we're mad enough to."
He gave a faint nod. Strategy through terror. The path of a ghost.
---
They didn't ride long before the dunes began to twist—not just in shape, but color. A sick grayness bled through the golden dust, and jagged stakes rose like dead trees along the edges of the trail. On each, something had been impaled—tires, bones, rusted masks, and one thing that chilled them all:
A Buzzard rig, split in two and stitched to the sand with melted steel.
Capable hands did that. Or inhuman ones.
The convoy rolled cautiously. War Rig at the front, Max's interceptor and two scavenged bikes forming a rear triangle. Slit kept one eye on the fuel, the other on the horizon. Cheedo curled against one of the support arms, whispering prayers to no god in particular.
That's when they heard it. A howl—not of pain or pursuit. It was ritual.
Max spun to his feet. "Incoming."
From the north, a pack of vehicles tore over the dunes, engines shrieking like banshees. Not the Buzzards. Not War Boys.
These were Vein-Eaters.
Scars painted their rust-buggies. Their faces were carved to resemble open wounds, bleeding from deliberately reopened veins. Screams echoed across the sands as they circled—ten, maybe twelve—their wheels forming a loose noose around Furiosa's convoy.
"She took the Revenant's path," one of the Vein-Eaters cackled from a bullhorn mounted on a stilt-walker car. His face was flayed from brow to jaw, and he wore a belt made of human spines. "She walks in the Burned God's wake!"
"We mean no quarrel," Furiosa called out.
"Then why follow the fire?" the man bellowed. "You trail the one who makes blood boil in the sand!"
They revved their engines, riding tighter. Traps sprang up—nail bombs on chain lines, whirling blades hidden under tarps. Max already had his rifle up, but even he knew: too many, too fast.
Furiosa leaned toward Toast. "Get the Wives below deck."
"Too late for hiding," Toast muttered, but obeyed.
Then it happened.
The lead Vein-Eater laughed and raised his bone-sickle.
And then his entire car split in half, front to back.
No explosion. No bullet. Just… a shear line like a sword had cleaved it with surgical violence. The corpse of the war-buggy coughed flame and collapsed.
All the others froze.
The sand around them hissed, darkening—ash and soot rising in small cyclones. And then came the sound.
Not an engine.
Not thunder.
It was the scream of Black Silence.
Over the nearest ridge, the towering war rig descended like a demon from the underworld. Its massive form was wreathed in smoke, its rebreathers screeching like tortured lungs. Fire leaked from its undercarriage. And on its prow, mounted like a figurehead, was the flayed remains of a Vein-Eater priest.
"The Revenant!" one of the war boys gasped.
The Vein-Eaters broke.
They didn't run.
They scattered—vehicles turning violently, flipping, crashing into one another in sheer panic. One man dived from his own buggy, screaming as if trying to dig into the dirt to escape.
Furiosa didn't wait. "Go!"
Her rig tore forward, following the Revenant's path. Max rode up alongside, jaw clenched. Behind them, the Vein-Eaters became a memory—just screaming shapes disappearing into smoke.
The Revenant didn't stop for them. But he knew. He always knew.
---
Night fell fast.
They made camp inside the burnt-out remains of an old refiner's depot—one of many that had been cleansed by the Revenant on his crusade to erase the old world. Even the bones of the place were glassy and black.
The Wives slept in shifts. Max kept watch with his rifle.
Furiosa stared into the embers, hearing again the way the Vein-Eaters screamed.
"He's not chasing us," she murmured. "But he's watching."
Max nodded. "We're bait."
"For what?"
He didn't answer.
Because something worse than warlords feared the Revenant.
Something he might be hunting.
---
A few hours later, Cheedo approached Max.
"He's not just death, is he?" she asked. "He's… something else."
Max didn't speak at first.
Then finally, "He's a grave we all helped dig."
And out in the dark, far beyond the dying firelight, Black Silence idled… and waited.