The desert had changed by noon.
The gentle cool that lingered in the morning had burned away, replaced by heat that weighed equally on everything. The sand had lost its softness and turned coarse beneath Izan's feet. Each step was harder, heavier; it was as if the land itself was paying attention to him.
Izan stood alone beyond the outer markers of the clan's territory, spear balanced across his shoulders as he watched the dunes ahead. This far out, there were no tents, no hearth smoke, no voices carried on the wind. Only sand and sky and the faint pull of Axiom beneath his skin.
This was where he trained.
Not because anyone told him to. They would have told him no. He trained here because he wanted to avoid being seen as a liability, and the distance from everyone made it easier for him to think.
He planted the spear into the sand and rolled his shoulders. His breathing slowed, falling into a rhythm he had practiced in secret for years.
Axiom stirred inside him.
It never flowed cleanly.
Unlike others who described it as a current, Izan felt it as pressure. Too much of it. Always uneven. It resisted direction like water trapped behind cracked stone.
He clenched his jaw and forced it downward.
Internal Art: Soko
The effect came immediately. His legs grew heavier, weight settling into his stance. The sand grains ground together as if they were resisting him. Izan adjusted instinctively, bending his knees, grounding himself.
He moved. The spear cut through the air in a fluid sweeping motion, slicing where an enemy's throat might be. He pivoted, spun the shaft, reversed the grip, then lunged forward with a force that sent sand spraying outward.
Too much.
He stumbled, barely catching himself before he fell to the ground. Axiom surged upward in protest, pressure flaring along his spine like a thunderstorm trapped beneath his skin.
Izan hissed, forcing the energy down again.
"Control," he muttered. "Not force."
He tried again. Slower this time. Less Axiom.
The spear obeyed. His body rebelled.
By the third repetition, cold sweat ran down his back. By the fifth, his breathing was uneven. By the seventh, a dull ache had settled behind his eyes, familiar and unwelcome.
Pushing further would only make it worse. He knew that. He had learned that the hard way.
Izan leaned on the spear and stared toward the horizon.
From here, the Glass Pass was as visible as a scar cutting through the dunes. Trade routes followed scars like that. Where routes shifted, trouble followed.
Teren's words from the other day echoed in his mind.
Traders are pushing north. Routes are changing, and that's because someone makes them.
Izan frowned.
The regulus clan had survived by avoiding the cities and the politics that came with them. The desert may have been harsh, but it was honest and consistent.
Cities were neither.
He turned back toward the camp.
The walk should have been less than an hour.
By the time Izan reached the first marker stone, the sun had dipped enough to stretch shadows into the sand. The heat was still lingering, but something had joined it.
Smoke.
He stopped.
The wind was shifting, carrying it more clearly now. Not the steady, comforting scent of a cookfire. This was bitter, sharp. It was of gunpowder and scorched hide.
Izan bolted.
The marker stones passed in a blur. His breath became fast, sand biting into his calves, ignoring his body protesting the sudden exertion.
No.
No, no, no.
The Regulus camp came into view.
What was left of it at least
Tents lay collapsed or torn open, dyed cloth reduced to blackened scraps. The central hearth was a mess of scattered embers and broken stone.
Izan slowed, the horror and the realization of what was going on creeping into his mind as it struggled to catch up to what his eyes were seeing.
Bodies.
Too many.
Stumbling around the camp, Izan's spear slipped from his numb fingers as he dropped to his knees.
A hunter. One of the older men. His chest was torn open, armor split cleanly as if it hadn't even existed in the first place.
Izan's hands shook as he moved. He didn't know where to look first. Every direction held another familiar shape lying still in the sand.
"Saira?" His voice was trembling. "Teren?"
No answer.
He found his family's tent collapsed near the inner ring. The cloth was stained dark, and the poles snapped like twigs. Izan tore at the fabric, his heart hammering so hard it hurt.
Inside, he felt empty.
He staggered back out, scanning wildly, with no direction, searching for anything until. His father's spear, lying half buried near the hearth, its shaft scorched.
Izan froze.
Kareth Regulus lay on his back, red eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. His chest bore a single, precise wound, the kind that spoke of experience rather than old age.
Izan fell beside him.
"No," he breathed. "No, get up. You're not–."
His hands pressed uselessly against the wound, blood already having gone cold. The world was narrowing until there was nothing but the sound of his breathing and the scream building inside his chest.
Axiom surged.
Violently.
Pressure exploded throughout his fractured paths, heat flaring beneath his skin as red lightning traced jagged lines across his arms and neck. The air around him was crackling faintly, sand lifting in trembling arcs.
Sharp pain followed
White and blinding.
Izan screamed as his whole body gave out, his vision swimming as the backlash hit him all at once.
The world was swirling and tilting.
The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the desert sky, still clear. Still quiet.
As if it were judging him. As if nothing had happened at all.