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The desert breathed like a furnace.
Heat rose in waves from the red dunes, the sun carving knives of light across broken stone and half-buried highway bones. Liam stood on the ridge and watched the sands shift, slow and deliberate, as if the desert itself were hunting.
Rena climbed the last stretch beside him, breath steady, armor dusted the color of blood. She scanned the flats below, eyes narrow, one hand resting on her sword, the other brushing sand from her cheek.
"This is it," she said. "Crimson Sands."
He nodded once.
The system pulsed, cold against the heat.
> [System Alert]
Zone Thirteen: Crimson Sands
Status: Active, hostile terrain
Detected: Feral Healer, designation unknown, watching from cover
Trial type: Mercy, protection, control
Warning: Pack aggression forecast, ambush likelihood high
The wind pushed a wall of grit across the basin. Shapes moved within it, not quite seen, not quite gone.
Rena slid a look his way, mouth set. "You could have summoned anyone today."
"I did," he said, quiet. "You."
A softer pulse threaded through the harder one.
> [System Notice]
Harem rotation protocol, active
Personal bond time, today: Rena
Emergency override, unused
She tried not to smile, and failed. "Then let's make it count."
They dropped from the ridge together, boots sinking in hot sand, the old road dissolving under their steps. Close in, the dunes were stitched with dry tracks, paw and claw, long sweeping tails, a map of movement written by something that did not want to be seen.
The ambush arrived without a shout.
The sand hissed, then rose, then exploded. Three shapes burst out in a rush of teeth and steel, desert raiders wearing scavenged plates, faces wrapped, eyes wild. Behind them, two lean things that were not men at all, sinew and thorn and dust.
Rena moved first.
Her blade cut the nearest raider from hip to collar, clean and brutal. Liam met the second and third, sword low, then high, then through, heat and blood and grit turning the air into a furnace of noise. A thorn beast lunged, jaw unhinging, and he pivoted, brought the edge across its neck, felt the bone give.
"Left," Rena said.
He did not look. He trusted, and the trust was enough. Her blade sang, and the last raider fell in a spray that turned the sand to rust.
Silence returned too quickly.
It was not real.
"Eyes up," Liam said.
The dune ahead breathed again, then opened.
More came, a half-ring, cautious now, not charging, only watching. Among them stood a girl in a cloak the color of sunburnt clay, bare feet on the sand, hair braided with bone and string. Her eyes were green, bright as glass, and wrong for this place, clear in a world of heat.
She lifted her hand.
The wounded raider behind Rena groaned once, then stopped groaning at all. The gash closed, the blood slowed, the breath steadied. He stared at the girl like a dog stares at rain.
Rena's grip tightened.
"A healer," she said. "Feral."
The girl's gaze slid to Liam, quiet, direct.
"You break," she said, voice soft, a little hoarse, as if she had been speaking to the desert for too long. "You take. You leave bones behind. The sands remember."
Liam held her eyes. "I take what follows me. I keep what I take."
Her mouth tilted, not a smile. "Pack words."
The system answered for her.
> [System Update]
Feral Healer identified: Naia
Trial condition: defend the weak, restrain the strong, accept pain, deny death to one who begs for it
Failure consequence: bond opportunity lost, pack hostility increased
Another shape crawled from the dune, dragging a mangled leg. Not raider. Not beast. Something in between, eyes gone white. It reached for Rena's ankle with fingers that were not fingers anymore, a wet sound tearing from its throat.
Naia spoke without looking away from Liam.
"Kill it, and I vanish," she said. "Spare it, and I vanish. Control it."
Rena's blade paused, the point hovering over the thing's throat.
"Your trial," she said, not pleased, not angry, only waiting.
Liam moved in one step, then knelt, then drove his hand into the creature's shoulder and held. It thrashed, strength like rope under his fingers. He put his weight into it, not cutting, not breaking, only pinning, only keeping the jaw from finding skin.
"Hold," he said.
Rena slid closer, guard high, eyes on the ring.
Naia's fingers twitched.
The sand pack edged forward, a test without movement.
"Pain," she said, so soft it should not have carried. "Yours."
Liam did not ask why.
He took his left hand off the thing's shoulder and braced his palm over its teeth. It bit, hard, through skin, through callus, through old scars. Heat flashed to cold, then back to heat. His vision narrowed for a second, then widened again.
The pack smelled the blood.
They did not charge.
Naia's eyes flicked to the bite, then back to his face. There was nothing kind in her gaze. There did not need to be.
"Enough," she said.
She lifted her hand.
Green light, thin as grass and twice as stubborn, ran from her palm to his wound. The bite closed, not perfectly, not cleanly, but enough to keep the blood from falling. The creature under his right hand went still, then slack. It slept. Or something like sleep.
Rena exhaled, long and slow. "Neat trick."
Naia ignored her.
"You do not bleed and panic," she said to Liam. "You bleed and think." A small nod, almost nothing. "Good."
The system pulsed again, brighter, faster.
> [System Alert]
Trial phase two, initiated
Objective: deny vengeance
Condition: release one, break one, save one
Timer: three minutes
Three raiders remained on their feet. One wide-eyed and shaking. One halfway dead, stubborn enough to stand. One braced behind the rest, the kind that lives by letting others die first.
Rena's voice came very quiet. "Your call."
Liam pointed at the wide-eyed one. "Run," he said. "Do not come back."
The boy ran, dropping his knife as if it had burned him.
Liam pointed at the stubborn one. "Down." The man did not drop. Rena took one step, and he did.
Liam walked to the last, the braced one, and stopped close enough to see his breath. "Look at me," he said. The man would not. Liam took his jaw in a bloody hand and made him.
"You live," he said. "You carry word. You tell them there is a line in this sand. You cross it, you do not come back."
He let go.
The man stumbled, then fled after the first.
Naia's mouth moved, something like surprise, then not. She lifted her hand again, and the stubborn raider's breathing eased. Not healed. Not dead. Held.
"Mercy, and not mercy," she said. "This is pack law."
He did not answer. He did not need to.
The system filled the heat with cold light.
> [System Update]
Trial complete
Bond seal available: Naia, Feral Healer
Verbal claim required
Reward: Lifethread — passive regeneration link, pulse heal on command
Territory bonus: wellspring nodes revealed, resource growth increased
Naia stepped closer, small in the space and not at all small. She smelled like dry sage, and rain that had not fallen. Her gaze did not leave his.
"You do not own me," she said, and somehow it did not sound like refusal. "You hold what I give. You do not drop it. You do not sell it. You do not use it to break the ones who kneel. Say this, and I follow."
Rena's chin lifted, proud and unafraid. "He keeps what he takes," she said. "Ask the ones who tried to buy us."
Naia watched Rena for a heartbeat, then returned to him. "Well," she said. "Overlord. Your word."
Liam held her eyes.
"I do not drop what is mine," he said. "I do not sell it. I do not use you to break those who kneel."
The desert seemed to breathe in.
"Then take the thread," Naia said.
He reached, not for her wrist, not for her throat, but for her forearm, palm to palm, pressure steady.
The air changed.
The system shone.
> [System Confirmed]
Bond sealed — Naia, Feral Healer
Lifethread unlocked: minor regeneration for bonded, pulse heal, shared pain option
Bond count: 11 / 99
Loyalty sync: 86%, stable
New directive: assign Naia to a post, or keep for personal trial, one day maximum
Warning: rotation rules apply
Naia let go first.
"You bleed well," she said. "Try not to bleed for nothing."
Rena huffed a very small laugh. "He does not know how."
Naia began to turn, then paused, head tilted. "Storm woman," she said. "The one who sings. She is not here."
"Elyra," Rena said, not quite a question.
Naia nodded. "Her power is loud. It will bring the wrong things if you leave it untended."
"We will not," Liam said.
The pack melted back into the dunes as if the sand had swallowed them. Naia did not vanish. She walked where they had gone, and the sand did not swallow her at all. It seemed to move aside.
Rena slid her sword home. Heat shimmered between the dunes, red and bright.
"So," she said. "Eleven."
He looked out over the desert, then up, toward a sky that was all glare and no mercy.
"Eleven," he said.
The pulse came again, steady now, not urgent, not yet.
> [System Alert]
Zone Thirteen secured, contested edges remain
New signal: Crimson convoy, three hours out, hostile interest detected
Optional: intercept, protect, claim resource route
Reward: territory stability, wife loyalty boost on success
Rena bumped his shoulder with hers, light, like it did not matter, like it mattered too much.
"Three hours," she said. "You want to summon someone, do it now."
He thought of frost on stone, and a ribbon on a throne, and stormlight on a spire, and the way the world had gone quiet when Naia said enough.
"Not today," he said. "Today I keep what I called."
Rena smiled without showing teeth, eyes bright in the glare.
"Good answer," she said.
They started walking, down into the heat, across the red, toward the line he had drawn in the sand.