The Doubts
The valley between dunes lay still as a wound.
Smoke drifted from fissures in the sand, curling through the cold dawn air.
On the eastern ridge, the Prophet's host waited—thousands of desert elves in mirrored mail, banners glowing faintly where the morning light touched the scorched edges.
Across the basin, the gnolls had gathered.
They were not the wild scavengers of border raids.
These ones moved in ranks, their howls timed with drumbeats made from bone and hide.
Red light pulsed beneath their skin, rising and falling like breath.
The dunes below shimmered faintly with runes that bled corruption into the sand.
At their center towered the creature that had once been a chieftain: now half-gnoll, half-demon, its horns blackened, its eyes pits of molten iron.
When it roared, the dunes shivered.
The Prophet rode to the front, the wind tugging at his white cloak.
He did not shout. He simply spoke, and the air carried him farther than sound.
"Children of the Dunes—today we meet the hunger that mocked our silence.
The Light will speak through steel, and mercy will carry its flame."
He turned his gaze across the gathered commanders, each waiting in rigid stillness, their warbands behind them.
"D'Rhael, take the northern ridge. Hold the high ground and let fire fall with the wind."
"D'Seron, lead the southern riders. Circle wide and break their beasts before they can charge."
"Vulhairi—your vanguard will strike the valley floor.
There's a cut in the dune to your left.
Cross it when the sun blinds the basin.
The Light will hide your blades until it needs them."
"D'Moroath, guard the banners.
Should any falter, let their ash remind the others to stand."
Each command fell like a hammer upon stone.
No one questioned; no one dared.
The Prophet raised his hand, and the desert brightened.
A slow ripple of gold rolled outward, washing over armor and eyes until even the wind seemed to glitter.
The gnolls stirred restlessly, their corrupted runes flaring in answer.
"Do not pity them," he said, his voice now low, steady, immense.
"They sought Light without understanding its cost."
He dismounted and walked forward alone.
Each step burned faintly in the sand, leaving afterimages like fallen stars.
The gnoll ranks parted as he descended, and the demon-chieftain stepped forth to meet him, wielding a cleaver of dark glass and hate.
For a moment, the two figures simply regarded one another—the embodiment of Light and the beast that fed upon its shadow.
Then, without gesture or cry, the Prophet extended his hand.
Light erupted—white, soundless, endless.
The dunes turned to glass.
The gnolls screamed and clawed at their faces.
The Duel of Fire and Shadow
The desert vanished in brilliance.
Every grain of sand burned white; every shadow fled.
The air turned solid—a wall of radiance that seared without heat.
Vulhairi's vanguard charged blind through the glare, shields raised, blades flashing in fractured glimpses of gold.
He could hear nothing but the thunder of his own heart and the hollow, echoing screams of the gnolls ahead.
The Light had become both storm and silence.
When his vision cleared, the Prophet and the demon-chieftain were already locked in battle.
The gnoll towered above him, a beast of sinew and black flame, its horns etched with runes that dripped molten crimson.
It swung its cleaver in great arcs, the air hissing as if it cut through creation itself.
Each strike left trails of shadow that clung to the Prophet's radiance.
But the Prophet did not move with mortal rhythm.
He flowed.
Every motion was deliberate, serene—each step marking a new pattern of light upon the sand.
When he parried, the air screamed.
When he struck, the sound was the breaking of dawn.
Above the battlefield, wings filled the sky.
The harpies of the Prophet's host flew in vast spirals, each bound to a commander below—eyes of the heavens paired with blades of the earth.
Their cries cut through the din, weaving signal and order into music.
Where they turned, the formations shifted; where they dived, the dunes themselves seemed to move.
Elizna flew among them, but not with them.
Her arc was broader, her descent slower—less a hawk's strike, more a dancer's fall.
She called out not in command but in warning, her voice threading through the Prophet's radiance like a note of memory.
To the soldiers below, the harpies were angels.
To Vulhairi, they were mirrors—each one reflecting obedience, except hers.
Her wings caught the Light, but they refused to hold it.
For a heartbeat, she looked like rebellion written in gold.
The Prophet and the demon clashed again—shadow and brilliance colliding until the ground itself split.
Flashes of red and white tore through the valley, scattering gnolls and elves alike.
Vulhairi's vanguard struck from the left, cutting through blinded ranks.
Vulghere's voice rose beside him, hoarse and fierce:
"Move with the Light! Don't let it move through you!"
The demon roared, plunging its cleaver into the sand.
Dark fire burst outward, swallowing half the valley in smoke.
The Prophet vanished within it.
Then came a sound like glass shattering from within.
A pillar of radiance split the clouds.
When the haze cleared, the Prophet stood alone, the demon broken at his feet, its chest hollowed by light that would not fade.
He looked back toward the army—not in triumph, but in something colder.
"Behold what the darkness teaches those who listen too long."
The gnoll horde broke.
They fled screaming into the dunes as the elves advanced in perfect, silent order.
Vulhairi watched the Prophet's glow shrink to the outline of a man—and wondered if the Light itself had learned to hunger.
The afterglow
Silence returned slowly, like breath after drowning.
The storm of Light faded, leaving only the hiss of cooling sand.
The valley floor was no longer earth — it had become glass, stretched smooth and pale beneath the sun.
The dead lay where the brilliance had left them: gnolls turned to black ash, their weapons fused to their bones.
The air smelled of salt, blood, and something sharper — the scent of miracles gone stale.
The Prophet stood at the center, motionless, his cloak untouched.
Steam rose from his footprints.
Around him, the army waited — thousands of elves frozen in reverence or disbelief.
None dared speak first.
Elizna landed beside Vulhairi, her wings trembling with exhaustion.
For the first time since they had met, she seemed dimmed — feathers dull, her breathing shallow.
"The Light burns longer now," she said quietly.
"It does not rest between its lessons."
Vulghere approached through the haze, his armor scorched to dull bronze.
He glanced toward the Prophet, then down at the ground.
"Even the sand's afraid to move," he muttered.
He knelt, touched the glass, and hissed.
"Still warm."
Vulhairi crouched beside him.
Through the translucent surface, he could see faint shapes — shadows of bones caught mid-turn, preserved like fossils in the molten earth.
He felt the heat pulse faintly beneath his palm, echoing the brand there.
"The Light doesn't just destroy," he said. "It remembers."
Vulghere's eyes met his.
"Then it's learning the wrong lessons."
Above them, the surviving harpies circled slowly, their formations broken.
A few still carried the discipline of command, gliding in neat arcs over the fallen.
But others drifted without purpose, wings sagging, songs reduced to hoarse murmurs.
Elizna watched them in silence, her jaw tight.
"They're bound to what shines," she said. "But the sky doesn't know the difference between glory and grief."
The Prophet finally moved.
He raised his hand, and the light around him dimmed, pulling itself inward like a tide retreating.
His voice, when it came, was calm — too calm.
"The first flame is lit.
The darkness knows our name again."
He looked over the battlefield — not at the fallen, but at the still-standing.
"Carry this memory with you.
The Light does not retreat.
It consumes until nothing remains to doubt it."
Then he turned away, descending the blackened slope without waiting for response.
The soldiers began to follow, hesitant, the sound of their steps fragile against the glass.
Vulhairi watched him go, the Prophet's orange cloak trailing a faint mist that refused to dissipate.
Elizna stood beside him, feathers stirring in the heat.
"You see it too," she whispered.
He nodded once. "The Light is no longer teaching," he said. "It's testing."
They followed in silence, their reflections warping in the glass at their feet —
two shadows moving beneath a sun that no longer felt like home.
Ash in the Wind
Night settled slowly over the valley of glass.
The dunes no longer glowed; they shimmered faintly in the starlight, each curve reflecting the day's ruin.
The army camped at its edge, silent and disciplined, their fires burning small and low—as if unwilling to compete with the memory of the Prophet's brilliance.
The Prophet himself had withdrawn to a simple tent at the ridge's crest.
No guards stood watch. None dared approach.
Only the glow of his lantern burned within, its light soft and steady—like a heart still beating after the body had gone to rest.
Vulhairi stood near the perimeter with his warband.
They had washed the sand from their armor, but the shine would not return; even polished steel looked dull after what they'd seen.
Some men whispered prayers. Others stared at their hands, the skin still marked where the Light had brushed them.
Vulghere sat nearby, turning a cracked emblem over in his palm.
"That blast took half my riders," he said, his voice rough. "Didn't even touch a gnoll near them. Just—gone."
He exhaled, slow and heavy. "Still, I suppose that's what loyalty costs."
Vulhairi nodded. "We were asked to give," he said. "And the Light took what it needed."
Elizna landed quietly behind them, folding her wings like cloaks.
Her feathers caught the starlight—dim gold, singed at the edges.
"The Light never takes," she said softly. "It only receives what is freely offered. That is its mercy, though few understand it."
Vulghere snorted but didn't argue. He looked to the Prophet's tent, its lantern flickering like a small sun behind the thin fabric.
"Still feels like too much for one victory."
Vulhairi's gaze followed his.
"The first flame always does," he said.
He remembered the Prophet's voice, calm amid the battle: The Light reclaims its shadow.
There had been no pride in those words, only inevitability.
Like fire explaining why it burns.
Across the camp, the other commanders gathered their harpies.
The great wings beat dust into the night sky, scattering embers over the tents.
Their calls were low, mournful, almost a hymn.
Elizna watched them, her expression unreadable.
"They sing for those who fell," she murmured. "In the old songs, the wind carries the names of the willing to the sun."
Vulghere frowned. "And if the sun doesn't answer?"
"Then the Light remembers anyway."
A gust swept through the camp, scattering the ash that still drifted from the valley.
It rose in silver spirals, glimmering briefly before vanishing into the stars.
Every soldier watched until the last mote was gone.
Vulhairi turned to his warband.
"Rest," he said. "Tomorrow we bury what we can, and march where the Prophet leads."
As they settled, Elizna spoke one last time.
"You fear the cost," she said. "But cost is how the Light stays pure."
Vulhairi looked out at the valley—at the glass that had once been sand.
"Then let it stay pure," he said quietly. "We'll carry the weight for it."
The wind stirred again, cool and patient, lifting the ash until it disappeared beyond the ridges—
a quiet procession of smoke, faith, and remembrance.