He doesn't lower his sword. I don't lower my wings. The silence stretches between us until it feels like a blade drawn too slow. I step closer.
"Choosing to live puts you in someone's way. Whose?"
His throat works as he swallows. His grip on the hilt tightens.
"Pharaoh's."
I taste the word in my mouth like iron. It stings.
"You ran from him."
He nods once. No apology. No shame. I watch him carefully. His breathing is ragged, but his stance is set. Not a coward. Not a fool. Something in him still burns.
"You saw what I did back there," I say.
His jaw hardens. "I saw."
"And you're still standing here?"
He glances at the rings, their glow faint in the dusk. Then back to my face.
"Yes."
I almost laugh. Instead, I sheath the blade. My wings shift, feathers scraping like stone.
"You're either brave or suicidal."
He exhales through his nose, a ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
"You already said that."
The trees behind him groan. The air tastes like copper. I feel the pull through the rings, faint but growing, a thread winding tighter.
"They're tracking me," I say.
"I know."
I pause. He speaks like he has already seen what follows.
"How?"
He doesn't answer right away. Then, low and even:
"Because I was one of them. I know how Saijew hunts."
His name drops like a stone in my chest. The General. The one who touched my wings.
I glance up at the sky, feel the distant hum in the air where the portal closed. The trace is there, buried under my skin.
"They won't stop," he says.
"I don't plan to run forever."
He meets my eyes at that. Something unspoken passes between us. Then the ground shakes. A crack splits the earth somewhere far off, faint but heavy enough to feel in my bones. I spread my wings. Obsidian feathers catch the last light.
"You can follow me, or you can die here. Your choice."
He hesitates for only a heartbeat before stepping forward. We move fast, deeper into the dunes, until the tree is a speck behind us.
The pull on my rings sharpens. My chest aches with it. They know where I am. They will keep knowing. Night falls quick. The desert glows cold. My wings fold tight against my back, but the weight of them never leaves.
I glance at the man beside me. His face is set toward the horizon, but I can see the fear tightening his jaw.
I speak without looking at him.
"If you stay with me, you'll see more death than you ever wanted."
His reply is quiet.
"If I go back, I'll see nothing at all."
The words sit heavy. Ahead, the dunes shift like something is moving beneath them. The air trembles. My rings flare bright, one by one, colors bleeding across my skin.
The hunt has begun.
I draw my blade and spread my wings wide, the sound sharp as tearing cloth.
"If you run now," I tell him, "you might survive the first strike."
He doesn't run.
The horizon splits. Gold light floods the desert as another portal tears open. Soldiers pour through, more disciplined than the last. And behind them, a shadow far larger than the men it commands.
Saijew has followed.
I smile, small and sharp, and raise my right hand.
The white ring burns like frost. My wings ignite.
"Then stay," I say.
And the sky answers me.
The air tears open.
Portals, one after another, rip across the horizon like wounds. Blue light spills out, sharp and wrong against the desert night.
Men step through. Not frantic. Not disorganized. Every movement is controlled, drilled. Their armor gleams in the moonlight. Their eyes are empty.
And at the center, Saijew.
He steps out last, his artifact glowing faintly on his hand, portals closing behind him like they never existed. He does not draw a weapon. He does not need one.
Kahn shifts beside me. His breathing slows. His body begins to change.
I hear the sound first, like stone cracking under pressure. His skin darkens, hardens, until it glows faintly black, like polished glass catching starlight. The air grows colder, sharp enough to bite my lungs. Then it changes again, snapping to unbearable heat. The sand at his feet hisses, turning molten.
Obsidian plates form over him, locking into place. His eyes flare white.
He doesn't look at me when he speaks.
"Stay with him. I'll hold the others."
I nod once.
Then he moves.
The soldiers surge forward, spears and energy rifles raised. Kahn meets them head-on, shattering the first man's spear with a backhand that sends the soldier flying into another portal still closing behind them. The air vibrates with the heat rolling off him, then drops again into impossible cold. Frost creeps over the ground in jagged patterns.
I watch him for only a moment before Saijew speaks.
"You are far from careful."
His voice is calm, but it cuts clean through the chaos.
I face him, wings spreading wide.
"You followed me."
"I marked you," he says simply, and raises his hand to show me the shard of armor he took. "Did you think I would waste time chasing blindly?"
I glance past him at his men. They move with machine precision, striking and falling back in perfect rhythm, but Kahn's body is a storm every time they close in, he superheats the ground to glass, then freezes the shards into knives that explode outward, shredding through their ranks.
"You should have brought more men," I say.
Saijew almost smiles. "This isn't about killing you."
"Then what is it?"
"Control," he says. "Do you even know what you're wearing?"
I hold up my hands. The rings glow, cobalt, gold, red, pink, white. Each pulse syncing with my heartbeat.
"I know enough."
He shakes his head slowly. "No. You don't. Those are not gifts. They are chains. You are binding yourself to a power that does not belong to you."
"I killed for them," I say.
"Yes," he says. "And you will kill more. Until you are empty."
A soldier screams somewhere behind him, cut off as Kahn's fist drives through his chest. The air fills with the smell of burning metal.
"You sound afraid," I tell him.
"I am cautious," he corrects me. "You have no idea what these rings were forged for. You think they make you free. They are not freedom. They are an invitation. And someone will answer."
I feel the rings pulse hotter at his words, like they recognize the truth in them.
"Then let them come," I say.
He tilts his head slightly, studying me.
"Your contract is waking faster than it should. Three stages in one night? That is not natural. The goddess is pushing you too quickly."
I feel my feathers bristle.
"You think you know my goddess?"
"I know the one who made those rings," he says. "And she does not favor mortals. She uses them."
Kahn slams another soldier into the sand hard enough to leave a crater. His body is glowing now, heat and cold fighting across his skin, obsidian reforming every time a blade breaks through it.
"You should leave," Saijew says suddenly.
I blink.
"What?"
"Take the boy and run. Because the next time I open these portals, it won't be me who steps through them."
The implication hangs in the air like smoke.
"You mean the pharaoh."
He nods once. "And you are not ready for him."
I laugh softly. The sound feels strange in my throat.
"Then make me ready."
For the first time, his expression cracks, not anger, not fear. Something sharper.
"You are reckless," he says. "And that recklessness will kill you."
I step closer, until the tip of my wing nearly grazes his chest.
"Then kill me now."
He doesn't move. The artifact on his hand glows faintly, but no portal opens.
Behind me, Kahn roars as his body flashes white-hot, the heatwave blasting across the sand and dropping half the remaining soldiers where they stand.
Saijew exhales once through his nose.
"You've made your choice."
He turns his hand, opens a portal at his feet, and steps back through it. The remaining soldiers retreat in silence, vanishing behind him until the desert is empty again.
Kahn staggers toward me, obsidian plates cracking as his body cools.
"They left," he says, almost in disbelief.
"They'll be back," I answer.
I look down at my hands. The rings glow brighter than ever.
And for the first time, I wonder if Saijew was right.
The desert is quiet again. Too quiet.
Kahn's obsidian shell cracks apart and falls from his shoulders in black shards. His body steams, still glowing faintly from the heat. He's breathing hard, his hands clenched, veins still pulsing with divine energy.
I take a step closer, my wings folding back.
"Who are you?" My voice sounds sharper than I intend.
He glances at me, eyes still pale with power. "You saw what I did."
"That's not an answer." I hold up my hand, the five rings flashing in the moonlight. "No one fights like that without a contract. Whose blood are you tied to?"
His jaw tightens. He doesn't answer right away.
"Tell me," I press.
Finally, he speaks.
"Geb."
The name hangs in the air like a weight.
"The god of the earth?" I ask.
He nods once, his voice low.
"Geb's blood runs through me. His gift is control over temperature in its purest form. The ground, the air, my body — I can take it to absolute cold, one Kelvin, or heat it until the earth itself melts. It hardens the earth around me, turns my skin to obsidian. It makes me… something more than human."
I stare at him.
"And you use that to fight the Pharaoh's men?"
"I use it to survive." His eyes lock on mine. "The Pharaoh's bloodline serves Seth. They've hunted my family for generations. Every time one of us awakens Geb's contract, they send soldiers to kill us before we grow strong enough to fight back."
The wind shifts, carrying the smell of scorched sand and blood.
"So you run," I say.
He exhales through his nose, not denying it.
"Run. Fight. Whatever keeps me alive one more day."
Something inside me twists. I look at the soldiers' bodies scattered across the desert, glass shards sticking out of their armor where Kahn's obsidian storm tore through them.
"You're not afraid?" I ask.
He almost laughs. "I'm terrified. Every moment. But fear doesn't matter. Power is all they respect. If I'm going to die, I'll make them remember why they feared Geb's children."
I look down at my rings. Each one glows faintly, like they're listening.
"You sound like Saijew," I mutter.
"Who?"
"The general. The one who sent them here. He thinks the rings are a curse."
Kahn studies me for a long moment.
"Maybe he's right."
I turn away from him, looking out across the desert toward Egypt, the horizon glowing faintly where the Pharaoh's city lies.
"Then curse or not," I say, "I'll use them until there's no one left to stop me."
When I look back, Kahn is still watching me, but there's no judgment in his face. Only a strange calm.
"Then we fight together," he says.
For a moment, I don't answer. Then I nod once.
"Together."
The night feels heavier somehow. The sand shifts under my feet as if the earth itself heard us.
The night smells of burnt sand. Kahn stands in the wreckage of what was moments ago a platoon, steam still peeling off his skin in waves. His obsidian shell is fractured around his shoulders, glinting like shards of cooled glass.
I take a step closer, my wings folding tight.
"So how does this work exactly; your contract, I mean."
He looks at me, breath steady now, though his chest still glows faintly like embers under skin.
"You really want to know?"
"Yes."
He exhales slowly, and for a moment, the heat around him drops. The air grows cold enough to make my breath fog.
"Geb's power isn't gentle," he says. "It's not a gift. It's a weapon. I turn my body into the earth itself, force it to behave in ways it was never meant to. I can drop my core temperature to one Kelvin, colder than almost anything in existence. The blood in my veins starts to crystalize. My bones harden into black stone. Every breath burns because the air wants to freeze in my lungs."
He flexes his hand, and a thin crack of frost traces up his arm before vanishing.
"And then," he continues, his tone lower now, "I reverse it. I push my body past the point where anything should live. Five, six trillion degrees, hotter than a star's core. The ground around me melts into glass, the air turns to fire. If I lose control, I don't just die, I become the explosion."
I watch him, my own rings humming faintly, responding to the divine energy rolling off him.
"So every time you fight like that…" I start.
"It's killing me," he finishes, blunt. "My muscles tear. My skin burns from the inside. When the obsidian shell cracks, it's my body that cracks with it. And yet if I stop, if I hesitate, they catch me. And I die anyway."
I let his words settle, the air still hot, the smell of scorched earth still sharp in my nose.
"And you keep using it."
His jaw tightens. "Better to burn on my terms than theirs."
Something in my chest shifts, uncomfortable and heavy. I glance at the soldiers' corpses scattered across the sand. The obsidian shards jutting from them look almost ceremonial in the moonlight.
"You've been doing this a long time," I say.
He nods once, slow. "Since the first time the Pharaoh's men came for my father. I was thirteen."
I study him, my hand brushing the rings. "Then you're either the most stubborn man I've met, or the most dangerous."
He almost smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes.
"Maybe both."
I turn back toward the horizon where Egypt burns faintly under the moon. My wings twitch, restless.
"Then we fight together," I say.
Kahn doesn't hesitate. "Until the last soldier falls."
The sand seems to hum at our feet, as if Geb himself heard the vow.