CHAPTER 9
The Emberglass Desert
The desert began without warning.
One moment they walked across red stone and silver grass; the next the land simply fell away into a sea of black glass that stretched to every horizon. The Emberglass Desert (once the bed of an ocean of molten starfire, now cooled into a single, flawless plain of obsidian so pure it reflected the crimson moon like a mirror of blood).
Heat rose from it in visible waves. The air above the glass shimmered and danced, turning the world into a furnace where distance and direction lost all meaning. Sound died the instant it was born. Even the wind feared to cross this place.
Veyra Ashendari led them to the edge and stopped.
She stood naked save for the living kelvinite runes that crawled across her skin like white fire under flesh. The runes had dimmed since the fight, but now, beneath the bleeding moon, they flared anew (hungry, eager).
Behind her, the nineteen surviving Ashendari formed a silent crescent. Their steel weapons were gone (dissolved by Ashend or surrendered willingly). Only the liquid kelvinite remained, etched into their bodies in patterns of war and mourning.
Veyra turned to Kael.
"Three days," she said. "No water. No shade. The glass drinks the sun and gives back death. Men who cross it without the moon's blessing boil inside their own skins before the first sunset."
She knelt and pressed her palm to the obsidian. The kelvinite runes flared, spreading across the glass in a perfect circle ten paces wide. Where the runes touched, the glass cooled from black to frost-white, forming a path that glowed faint and steady.
"The Ashendari walk this road once in a lifetime," she continued, rising. "When we earn the right to bear kelvinite in our blood. Most do not return. Those who do are never the same."
She met Kael's eyes.
"You will walk it now. With us. Or you will die here, and the Veil Lord wins."
Corvin spat to one side. "Charming hospitality."
Lira said nothing. Her white coat was already darkening with sweat.
Kael looked at the path of frost-white glass stretching into the heat-shimmer. At the far horizon, impossibly distant, a single spire of red stone rose like a broken finger pointed at the moon.
"Caladrei," Veyra confirmed. "The Free City. The only place in the Heartlands the Veil Lord has never conquered. If we reach it, the road to the Ashen Dominion opens."
Kael drew Ashend.
The blade woke with a low, hungry thrum. The three hair-fine scars glowed in perfect rhythm with the runes on Veyra's skin.
He stepped onto the path.
The Ashendari followed.
The desert swallowed them whole.
Day One was fire.
The sun rose behind the crimson moon and turned the glass into a furnace mirror. Heat struck from above and below, from every direction at once. The air itself seemed to burn in the lungs. Within an hour their boots smoked. Within two, the soles began to melt.
Veyra set a brutal pace. The Ashendari walked barefoot, kelvinite runes flaring with every step, cooling the glass just enough to bear. Kael's boots lasted until midday; then the leather cracked and the soles peeled away. He walked on blistered feet, Ashend's wrapped hilt his only protection.
Corvin lasted longest in his old boots, cursing with every step. Lira's white coat became a torment; she cut it to the waist, baring arms and midriff, skin already reddening.
No one spoke.
The only sound was the hiss of glass beneath feet and the low, constant thrum of kelvinite answering kelvinite.
By dusk the first Ashendari fell.
Her name was Shara (nineteen winters, runes still fresh and bright). She had taken a spear-thrust through the thigh in the fight with Kael and refused to let the others cauterise it. Now infection and heat finished what steel had begun.
She collapsed without a sound.
Veyra knelt beside her. The circle stopped.
Shara's runes flickered, dimming to embers.
"Sing," Veyra commanded.
The Ashendari began a low, wordless chant that rose and fell like wind across dunes. Shara's lips moved in answer. Blood bubbled from her mouth, black in the failing light.
Veyra drew a small vial of liquid kelvinite from a pouch at her throat (the last of her personal store) and poured it across Shara's lips.
The dying woman drank.
Her runes flared once (blinding white), then collapsed inward. Skin cracked along the lines of star-metal. Light poured out. When it faded, only a statue of ash remained, perfect down to the last eyelash.
Veyra closed the empty eyes with two fingers.
"She walks with the moon now," she said.
They left the ash where it stood and walked on.
Night brought no relief.
The crimson moon hung overhead like a wound that would not close. The glass radiated the day's heat upward, turning the air into a furnace that never cooled. They walked through the night because to stop was to die.
Kael's feet were raw meat. Every step left bloody prints that steamed away before the next footfall.
Corvin began to delirious. He spoke to ghosts (old lovers, dead friends, enemies long buried). Lira walked with her bow across her shoulders like a yoke, eyes fixed on nothing.
Only the Ashendari seemed untouched, runes glowing steady, guiding them across the endless black mirror.
Day Two was thirst.
There was no water. Not a drop. Their mouths cracked. Tongues swelled. Vision blurred at the edges.
Veyra cut her own forearm and let the blood drip into a cupped hand. She offered it to Kael first.
He drank.
It tasted of iron and starlight and guilt.
One by one the Ashendari followed her example, offering blood to the outsiders who walked their sacred road. Lira drank without hesitation. Corvin spat the first mouthful, then drank the second with tears cutting tracks through the dust on his face.
By midday the second Ashendari fell.
This one simply walked off the path.
Her name was Kalia. She stepped into the black glass, runes flaring in protest, and kept walking until the heat took her. She burned from the inside out (kelvinite runes melting through skin, light pouring from eyes and mouth and every wound). When she fell, the glass beneath her shattered into a perfect circle of frost.
Veyra did not stop.
They walked on.
Night Two was hallucination.
The moon bled slower now, a wound scabbing over. The glass reflected it perfectly, turning the desert into an endless sea of blood.
Kael saw his father walking beside him, throat whole, eyes kind.
"You were always my pride," the echo said.
Kael burned it without breaking stride. The fourth fracture opened a finger's breadth. Pain lanced through his chest, but he welcomed it. Pain was real.
Lira saw her mother, smiling as she burned.
Corvin saw every man he had ever failed.
The Ashendari saw nothing. Their runes protected them from the desert's lies.
Day Three was the crucible.
The spire of Caladrei was visible now (close enough to make out windows, banners, the glint of steel on walls). But between them and the city stretched the final stretch: a field of broken kelvinite shards the size of houses, jutting from the glass like the ribs of dead gods.
The path ended.
Veyra stopped at the edge.
"Here the moon demands its final price," she said. "One must stay. One must become the bridge."
She drew her remaining kelvinite blade (the one that had locked with Ashend) and laid it across her forearms.
"I am First Blade. The debt is mine."
Kael stepped forward.
"No."
He raised Ashend.
The blade screamed (a sound that cracked the glass beneath their feet). The three hair-fine scars flared white, then wider.
"I will pay it."
Veyra's eyes narrowed. "You do not understand. The bridge must be kelvinite and blood and will. You are not Ashendari."
"I am the Seeker," Kael said. "And I am tired of watching people die for me."
He drove Ashend point-first into the broken glass.
The blade sank to the hilt.
Light exploded outward (not pale now, but blinding, the colour of stars being born). Fractures raced across the desert floor, connecting every shard of kelvinite in a perfect web. The glass rose in liquid waves, forming a bridge of black crystal that arched toward Caladrei.
Ashend's scars widened to canyons.
Kael felt his soul tear along them.
He burned the lie that he could save everyone.
The fifth fracture split the blade from hilt to tip with a sound like the world ending.
He did not fall.
When the light faded, the bridge stood complete (a ribbon of living kelvinite stretching to the gates of Caladrei).
Veyra looked at him with something that might have been fear.
"You just paid a price no Ashendari ever has," she whispered.
Kael pulled Ashend free. The blade was whole again, but five hair-fine scars now glowed across its surface (permanent, eternal).
He met her gaze.
"Power offered freely," he said, voice raw, "is always a leash disguised as a crown."
Veyra dropped to one knee (not in submission, but in recognition).
The remaining Ashendari followed.
They crossed the bridge as the crimson moon set behind them, bleeding its last light across the glass.
At the gates of Caladrei, the guards (hard men and women in scale of ember-forged bronze) stared in silence as twenty naked warriors painted in living star-metal and three blood-soaked strangers walked out of the desert that had killed every army that ever tried to cross it.
The gates opened without a word.
Kael stepped through last, Ashend heavy in his hand, five scars glowing like brands.
Behind him, the bridge cracked and fell into dust.
The Emberglass Desert had taken its price.
And the war for the Heartlands had truly begun.