The village had grown louder since Adonis’s departure.

  Not with chaos, but with rhythm. Hammer strikes rang against new-forged steel. Dune Dogs barked in sharp bursts as handlers drilled them to heel. Ironbacks bellowed when the Riders drove their spears into practice dummies, the ground trembling with every stomp of their mounts.

  Barek stood in the square, sweat running down the scars across his chest, his metallic skin catching the sun. The villagers had begun calling him Commander in whispers, and though he didn’t seek titles, he bore it now with a quiet pride.

  Around him, the two other Riders worked with their Ironbacks, driving them in sweeping charges that rattled the crude palisade walls. The beasts obeyed, massive horns lowering, smashing straw effigies to pulp. Beside them, the six Dune Dogs padded restlessly, teeth bared, their tan hides rippling with muscle. They were tethered loosely, but they hardly needed it. They moved as a pack, their loyalty to the Riders already etched deep by Adonis’s psionics.

  Nyra stood opposite the square with a smaller circle of young hunters, her cloak cast aside, her crimson fire pulsing faintly beneath her skin. She barked a sharp command, and the men struck in unison — palms, elbows, knees. No wasted movement, no flourishes. She corrected their stances with hard smacks to the shoulder or hip.

  “Phoenix Martial Arts,” she told them as Barek passed near. “It’s not about dancing with fire. It’s about precision. A phoenix’s flame burns brightest when it is contained — the same with your bodies. Strike to end. Nothing less.”

  Barek paused, watching one hunter drop another with a clean shoulder throw. For all her sharp tongue and sharper fire, the girl taught discipline like she’d been born for it.

  “You’re pushing them hard,” Nyra remarked when Barek called his Riders into another formation drill.

  “They’ll thank me when blades meet flesh,” Barek replied, his voice like gravel. He lifted his spear and shouted across the square: “Again! Line formation. Hold until the horn sounds!”

  The Riders obeyed, their Ironbacks stamping into place. The Dune Dogs circled, snarling, as if tasting battle in the air.

  For a moment, it almost looked like a true warband — not the remnants of frightened villagers, but soldiers forged from desert, iron, and flame.

  And yet, Barek’s scarred brow furrowed. The drills were sharp, the beasts growing stronger, the people more confident — but something gnawed at him. A calm this steady never lasted in the desert.

  Nyra must have seen the thought flicker in his eyes, because her voice dropped, softer but edged. “You feel it too.”

  Barek’s hand tightened around his spear. “Storm’s coming. I just don’t know if it’s wind or blood.”

  The Dune Dogs suddenly howled as if echoing his words, the sound rising sharp above the square.

  And every man in the warband stilled.

  ***

  The Dune Dogs’ howl cut through the square, sharp and unrelenting. The men froze mid-drill, spears half-raised, eyes snapping toward the palisade. Even the Ironbacks shifted uneasily, their horns scraping against each other as they stamped the earth.

  A runner burst from the wall’s ladder, breathless, eyes wide. “Riders!” he shouted. “Two dozen at least. Coming fast from the west.”

  Barek’s grip on his spear tightened. “Sound the horn. Form ranks at the gate.”

  The warband moved with a discipline that would have been impossible only weeks ago. Ironbacks thundered into line, the Riders steady on their backs, skin glinting faintly with their metallic sheen. The six Dune Dogs snapped free of their handlers and padded forward, their movements low and predatory, lips curled back over sharp teeth.

  From the walls, villagers leaned out, straining to see through the heat shimmer. Soon, the riders appeared: nomads on lean, dust-colored horses, their faces swathed in cloth, their curved blades flashing in the sun. They flew no clan banners, and that in itself was a warning.

  Nyra stepped up beside Barek, fire simmering faintly along her knuckles. “Not traders,” she said flatly.

  Barek grunted. “Scavengers. And bold ones.”

  The nomads slowed as they approached the gate, forming a loose half-circle. At their center rode three figures dressed not as warriors, but as Magi — their arms marked with crude runes, their eyes gleaming faintly with unnatural light. They sat higher than the others, gazes hungry, almost amused.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  One of the nomads called out in the desert tongue, his words carrying clear across the distance. “We’ve heard stories! A city rising from the sands, guarded by beasts and men who call themselves iron. We came to see if the rumors were true.”

  His grin was visible even beneath his veil. “And to collect our tribute.”

  Murmurs rippled along the wall. Villagers glanced at each other nervously, fear thick in their eyes. The nomads had chosen their words carefully: not bandits, not raiders — collectors. Trying to place themselves above, to bully the village into submission.

  Barek stepped forward, his voice booming like a drum. “You spilled blood when you touched our kin. There will be no tribute. Only reckoning.”

  Nyra’s fire flared hotter, her crimson eyes glinting. Behind them, the Dune Dogs growled low, tails stiff, hackles raised.

  The air grew taut, silence stretched like a drawn bow.

  Then one of the Magi laughed — low and mocking. “Then let us test these new lords of sand.”

  ***

  Dust clung to everything — his skin, his lips, even the lines of the runes carved into his forearm. But Qadir rode proud in the saddle, his horse loping steady as the desert wind. The boy-village had come into view at last: walls of fresh clay, towers stiff as spears, beasts penned like soldiers at attention. And the whispers had been true — Ironbacks, hulking shadows behind the gates, and strange desert hounds with eyes like fire.

  He clicked his tongue, amused. “So it exists. A village that thinks itself a city.”

  Beside him, Jahl tightened his grip on the reins, sparks of blue-white lightning twitching around his knuckles. “Stories travel faster than sandstorms. If they’re true, then this place may already rival the border outposts.”

  “Outposts?” scoffed Fahim, whose chest bore the spiraling runes of the wind path. His voice was high and sharp, as if the air carried him. “Look at them. Peasants behind mud walls. Their beasts may trample, but beasts are beasts. Once we break their handlers, the rest will scatter.”

  Qadir said nothing at first. His rune scars ached faintly — the price of channeling the earth’s bones into flesh. He let his gaze settle on the Ironbacks again, their horns gleaming, their riders standing stiff in polished armor that caught the sun. He saw no fear there, only readiness. It unsettled him.

  But he buried the feeling.

  “We are the Children of the Gale Tribe,” he said at last, raising his voice so the men around them could hear. “The largest tribe in all the western deserts. No outpost. No caravan. No village has ever withstood us. Not once. Not in a hundred summers.”

  His words rippled through the nomads like fire across dry brush, hardening spines and sharpening eyes.

  Fahim grinned, wind coiling faintly around his arms. “And this will be no different.”

  Jahl leaned forward in his saddle, lightning dancing like serpents along his spear’s haft. His grin was sharper. “Let’s see if these new lords bleed like the old ones.”

  They reined their horses closer together, forming a tight knot at the center of the line, eyes fixed on the gate. Behind them, two dozen riders raised their blades, shouting their tribe’s cry to the skies.

  From the walls of the village, the response came not in words but in sound — a low, rumbling roar as an Ironback stamped the ground, shaking the sand itself.

  Qadir’s horse shied, and he gritted his teeth. “Good,” he muttered. “If they want to act like kings, let them die like kings.”

  ***

  The Ironbacks moved first.

  The ground quaked as the colossal beasts surged forward, horns low, their riders gleaming like statues of bronze. Qadir braced, rune-scars on his arms flaring as he slammed his palms into the sand. A wall of stone erupted, jagged and high.

  The first Ironback hit it — and broke through.

  The wall cracked like thin pottery, shards spraying as the beast barreled straight through, its rider still steady in the saddle. The man’s skin glinted in the sunlight — not with sweat, but with metal.

  Qadir’s eyes widened. “What—”

  The answer came in screams.

  Jahl’s lightning lashed across one of them, arcs of blue fire dancing over the rider’s chest. The smell of scorched air burned Qadir’s nostrils… but the man kept coming. He crashed into Jahl’s horse, spear plunging down, and the nomad’s cry was cut short in a spray of blood.

  “Steel…” Fahim’s voice cracked as he saw it too. “Their skin is steel!”

  Panic rippled through the Gale riders as realization struck. The Ironback riders weren’t men anymore. They were something else.

  Qadir forced his trembling fingers into the sand again, pulling jagged spears of earth from the ground. He hurled them into the melee, but even when they struck true — piercing shoulders, gouging flesh — the men did not fall. One shattered the spear in his hand and roared, his voice booming like thunder.

  And the others — the militia.

  Qadir’s breath hitched as he saw them moving, striking, too fast, too strong. Peasants shouldn’t move like that. Yet here they were, blades cleaving through his tribesmen, shields breaking arms, every strike landing with weight beyond reason. No runes on their skin. No circles carved. No magic.

  Impossible.

  One of the dune dogs lunged past him, jaws clamping around another rider’s throat. The man toppled, blood spraying into the sand. The hound’s eyes glowed faintly, wrong and terrible.

  Qadir’s horse reared, panicked. He tasted bile. This wasn’t a skirmish. This was slaughter.

  Fahim screamed as an Ironback horn tore through his mount, the wind runes on his arms sputtering out as he hit the ground. Qadir didn’t even see him rise again.

  He realized then — if he stayed, he would die.

  Spurring his horse hard, Qadir tore away from the fight, sand whipping his face as he fled. Behind him, the roars of Ironbacks and the clash of steel drowned out the cries of his tribe. He didn’t dare look back.

  He rode until his lungs burned, until his horse foamed at the mouth, until the village was nothing but a ghost in the dunes.

  Only then did he allow himself to breathe.

  “The Children of the Gale,” he rasped, throat raw. “The largest tribe… broken by a village.”

  He tightened his grip on the reins, terror crawling down his spine.

  This news had to reach the camp. The others had to know.

  Because whatever those villagers were, they weren’t human anymore.