Ravik pulled his tattered red cloak tighter around his shoulders, though the cold he felt wasn't from the wind. He scrambled over a ridge, his breathing ragged, boots sliding in the loose shale. He didn't look back. He didn't want to see if those terrible eyes were still watching.

  "We shouldn't have gone to the fire," one of his hunters muttered, stumbling beside him. "That boy, I have never felt a fear so primal before."

  "Shut up," Ravik hissed. He fingered the trophy necklace at his throat, reassured by the cold touch of the fossilized Iron-Born finger. "We survived. That is enough."

  They moved in silence until the sun bled over the horizon, turning the dunes into burning gold. The fear of the night began to fade, replaced by the gnawing, familiar ache of empty bellies. By midmorning, the Wastes shimmered like molten glass.

  Ravik crouched at the crest of a dune, scanning the low ridge ahead. His eyes, sharp and sunken, locked onto movement in the basin below. Two stray demons were trudging through the dust. They were broad, leathery things dragging a lizard carcass toward the northern cliffs. Their armor was cracked, their movements sluggish. Runts without a tribe.

  Easy prey.

  He raised a hand. The four hunters behind him froze. "We take them alive," he whispered. "Fresh meat lasts longer."

  They spent the next hour tracking the demons' path through the broken terrain. Ravik knew how they moved, how they breathed. Demons trusted their strength too much; they always forgot to look behind them, and never bothered smelling the wind.

  As the sun reached its peak, the ambush commenced.

  The first net went wide, but the second tangled true, wrapping one demon's horns and dragging it to its knees. The creature bellowed, snapping ropes as Ravik vaulted down from the ridge. He jammed a rusted spear through its leg, twisting until bone gave way. The others piled on, clubs and hooks slamming down in rhythm.

  The second demon roared and charged, claws gouging through the sand. One of Ravik's men went flying with a gash across his chest, spewing blood into the sand. Ravik spun low, slashing his hooked knife across the beast's ankle tendon. It stumbled; the others threw their last net, tangling its arms. They pulled the ropes taut until the demon fell, thrashing.

  When the struggling finally stopped, Ravik stood over them, chest heaving. The red cloak clung to his back, soaked in sweat.

  "Bind their mouths," he ordered. "We'll take them to camp."

  One of the hunters hesitated, looking away from the captured demons to the patch of bloodied sand where their comrade lay.

  "Ravik," the hunter called out, voice tight. "He will not make the trek."

  Ravik walked over, his boots crunching in the blood-soaked sand. He looked down. The demon's claw had opened the man from shoulder to sternum. Frothy red bubbles burst on his lips with every ragged breath. The sand was drinking him dry.

  Ravik knelt, his expression solemn, devoid of the earlier adrenaline. He placed a hand on the man's forehead, brushing away the grit.

  "You know the rules of the Wastes, brother," Ravik whispered.

  The dying man looked up, eyes dimming, and managed a weak, jerky nod. A tear cut through the dust on his cheek. He moved his trembling hand away from the wound, exposing his throat in silent submission.

  "Serve or starve," the man wheezed, the old creed bubbling up with blood.

  "Serve well," Ravik replied.

  With a swift, practiced motion, Ravik drove his knife into the jugular. He twisted once to ensure it was clean, then held the man's gaze until the light faded. It was quick. It was mercy.

  Ravik stood up, wiping the blade on his trousers.

  "Bind him," he ordered, his voice flat.

  The hunters wasted no movements. There was no mourning, only utility. They tied the dead man's hands and feet, tossing him onto the sled of rough-hewn bone alongside the prizes.

  Two demon bodies, the lizard carcass, and now, one of their own.

  It was a mountain of meat.

  "A heavy haul," one of the hunters grunted, wrapping the drag-lines around his waist. "It'll be a slow march back."

  Ravik grabbed a rope, wrapping it around his forearm until the leather bit into his skin, taking the lead position.

  "Heavy," Ravik agreed, leaning his weight into the pull to get the sled moving. "But we eat well tonight."

  The Wastes changed color as the day wore on, from red to bronze, then to ash.

  By the time they reached their encampment, the sun was sinking. The camp was a sprawl of patched tents and bone scaffolds wedged between black rocks, half hidden in the shadow of a collapsed ridge. Smoke rose thinly from a dozen dying fires.

  When the sentries saw the bodies, a ragged cheer went up.

  "Ravik's back! He brings meat!"

  Ravik forced a grin despite the ache in his shoulders. For a heartbeat, the camp almost sounded alive. He dragged the prizes into the clearing and dropped the spoils beside the central pit. The demons still thrashed, ropes creaking.

  Varkir, his second, limped out from between the tents, rubbing at a scar that ran from ear to jaw. "The Wastes are tightening," he rasped, eyeing the mountain of meat on the sled.

  "Word from the west," Varkir continued, his voice dropping. "That great stone husk that Cindercrest has been slaving over? It is nearly complete. The Dust-Flats are not safe anymore."

  Ravik untied the drag-line from his arm, his muscles burning. "Let them build. They love their stone."

  "They aren't staying in this one," Varkir countered, his expression grim. "Their patrols... they are reaching deeper. They found the Salt-Skimmer camp three nights ago. Snuffed it out."

  He looked at Ravik, his eyes hard.

  "And they aren't taking cages anymore, Ravik. No prisoners. They put every living thing in that camp to the sword. They are sweeping the Wastes, claiming the territory mile by bloody mile. We are losing land that we hunt in."

  Ravik grunted, wiping sweat from his brow. "Then we move east."

  "East is worse," Varkir said. "Shatterdeep controls the east, you know this. We're no match for the demon tribes."

  "Then we change tactics. Pick them off one at a time," Ravik said, gesturing to the bound demons struggling on the sled. "We cannot survive by eating our own. We need meat that fights back."

  Behind them, the hunters tipped the bone-sled to unload the haul. The massive carcass of the lizard slid off, followed by the heavy thud of the bound demons.

  Then, the smaller, rag-clad body of one of their own rolled onto the sand, landing in a heap at Varkir's feet.

  Varkir paused. He looked down at the dead man, noting the tribe markings on his skin and the fatal, precise wound in his neck. He slowly raised a single, skeptical eyebrow at Ravik.

  "Cannot eat our own?" Varkir asked, his voice dry.

  Ravik didn't flinch. He began unbuckling his gear, his face hard.

  "He was gutted by the beast. Dying. The sand was already drinking him," Ravik said, his tone flat. "To leave him to rot is to waste. And to waste is to die."

  He stepped closer to his second, his voice dropping to a murmur that carried the law of the Wastes.

  "Serve or starve, Varkir. No one is exempt from the rules. Not even us."

  Varkir held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. He looked back at the butchers swarming the pile.

  "I'll sharpen the knives," Varkir said, his shoulders sagging. "You've kept us breathing this long, but we cannot keep losing hunting ground."

  Ravik looked over the faces gathering around him, dozens of gaunt men and women, children with eyes too old for their years. The camp was dying. Every hunt stretched farther than the last; every return brought fewer hands to greet it.

  "Prepare the meat," Ravik ordered. He looked past them all. The horizon glowed faintly red, as though the sky itself were bleeding. "Tonight we feast."

  - - -

  By the time night fully claimed the ridge, the camp was transformed.

  Great fires roared in the center of the depression, casting long, dancing shadows against the rock walls. The air, usually thick with dust and despair, was now heavy with the scent of roasting flesh. The grease of the demon-meat popped and hissed on the spits, the smoke thick and savory.

  For a few precious hours, the brutal nature of the Wastes was suspended.

  Teeth were bared in smiles, not snarls. Laughter, a sound as rare as water in these lands, bubbled up from the circles of eating men and women. They tore into the charred meat with greasy hands, passing skins of fermented cactus sap between them. Even the loss of their own was forgotten, or rather, honored in the consumption. He was filling their bellies, keeping the tribe strong.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Ravik sat near the largest fire, gnawing on a skewer of lizard flank. The heat of the flames soaked into his tired bones. He watched his people. They were fed, warm, and, for the moment, safe. The encroaching banners of Cindercrest and the savageness of demons felt miles away.

  The worries were gone for the night.

  But as the meal wound down and the fires began to dim to glowing embers, the atmosphere shifted.

  The laughter died out, throat by throat, replaced by a confused silence. A murmur rippled through the camp, low and anxious.

  "Something's coming," one of the women said, clutching her child. "The wind smells wrong."

  She was right. A new scent bled into the air, cutting through the smoke and grease, a scent of bitter cold and old dust.

  Ravik's hand went to his blade, the peace of the feast forgotten in moments.

  "Perimeter?" he called, standing up. "Ridge guard!"

  There was no answer from the sentries above. Only the sound of the wind, suddenly freezing, howling down the canyon walls.

  Then, from the darkness beyond the camp, a sound emerged. Not the chaotic chittering of the migration Ravik had heard the night before. This was rhythmic. Heavy. The sound of hundreds of feet stepping in unison.

  The central fire pit flared, replaced by a roaring column of viridian fire. It wasn't natural flame; it was corpse-light... casting long, nauseating shadows against the tents.

  In the flickering green glow, they saw them.

  The infected. Hundreds of them. They formed a living wall around the camp's perimeter, shoulder to shoulder, a mass of blackened veins and silent snarls. They stood like statues, waiting.

  The tribe recoiled, backing into the center of the clearing away from the green fire. The youngest among them dropped to their knees without meaning to, as if their bodies remembered a hierarchy older than language.

  "What is this?" Varkir whispered, drawing a rusted knife.

  "Silence," a voice rasped.

  It came from everywhere. It resonated in their minds.

  Two figures drifted through the ranks of the infected. The horde parted like water to let them pass. As the figures glided into the camp, the ground beneath them hissed, turning white with sudden frost.

  Velcryn moved first.

  He did not touch the ground; he floated inches above it, the air around him cracking with absolute zero. His robes were tattered midnight-blue silk, bleached pale at the edges by the grave. Under the deep, ornate cowl of his hood, his skull appeared frosted over, the bone encased in a thin sheen of rime. Heavy rings of cold silver adorned his skeletal fingers, and a chunk of meteoric iron hung around his neck.

  Inside his hood, two sapphire flames burned, cold and hungry. His presence was a void.

  Myrrakhael followed at his left.

  Taller, he was wrapped in rotting viridian silk, trailing vapor. Green flame hissed from between his ribs. A necklace of black jade and finger-bones rattled against his sternum. His eyes were points of emerald fire that flickered in unison, cold and steady.

  Behind them came the entourage, a select dozen of the strongest infected. Their skin was blackened, their horns melted into twisted stumps, and their eyes were devoid of any intelligence. They walked with jerky, marionette-like steps, following their masters into the circle.

  Ravik stared at the floating lords, his breath steaming in the sudden cold. He realized with a jolt of terror that the frost trailing behind Velcryn was freezing the sand.

  The ground trembled. A grinding vibration shook the pebbles. The ring of infected demons parted, making room for something massive.

  Two hulking shapes lumbered into the firelight.

  Dreadmaws, subterranean horrors found deep in the crust, chewing through bedrock. They were hulking, quadrupedal nightmares, their backs plated with thick, jagged ridges that looked like a mountain range in miniature.

  Their wedge-shaped heads had no eyes, only ridged plating and vertical maws lined with serrated mandibles capable of crushing granite. Their massive, shovel-like foreclaws dragged furrows in the sand with every step. These were beasts built to breach fortifications from below, now forced to march upon the surface.

  They moved with the heavy, eager gait of loyal hounds returning to their masters. One Dreadmaw, its scales frosted over, rumbled up to Velcryn. It nudged its massive, blind head against the lich's floating hem.

  Velcryn paused. He reached down with a skeletal hand, scratching the monster's snout. The beast let out a chittering purr.

  "Patience," Velcryn murmured, his voice like ice cracking.

  The second Dreadmaw, slick with green sludge and pulsing veins, slunk to Myrrakhael's side. The green lich rested a hand on its armored crest, green sparks drifting from his fingers to feed the rot within the beast.

  Ravik stared at the floating lords and their purring monsters, his breath steaming in the sudden cold.

  Velcryn's stare met Ravik with a crushing weight.

  "Flesh," the lich murmured. "Fragile. Short-lived. Wasteful."

  Ravik mustered all the courage he could and stepped forward, his blade bare. "You've walked far enough. Speak your names, if you've still got tongues."

  Velcryn tilted his head. When he spoke, his voice rumbled low and echoed, like rock cracking under pressure.

  "Names… a mortal thing. Yet you may call me Velcryn."

  The green lich looked down upon the gathered crowd. His voice carried like wind through hollow stone.

  "And I am Myrrakhael."

  The camp seemed to shrink beneath the weight of those names. The fire roared at the mention of Myrrakhael's name.

  Varkir swallowed hard beside Ravik. "What in the Wastes are you?"

  "Children of bones," Velcryn said.

  Ravik held his ground. "And what do you want with us?"

  Myrrakhael's skeletal hand gestured toward the camp, the gaunt faces, the half-eaten demons.

  "You starve," he said. "Your prey dwindles. Your people fade. Tell me, hunter, how many more nights before your tribe eats its own?"

  Ravik's jaw clenched. "Enough of your talk."

  Velcryn floated closer. The ground beneath him blackened in a ring, leeching the color from the stone. "We offer you what the Wastes cannot. A chance to endure."

  Varkir spat into the sand. "And what would you ask in return?"

  Velcryn's gaze washed over Varkir, the weight of his presence enough to make the man cower against his will. "Intelligence. Our children here are a flood; they spread to what is in front of them, but they cannot see what hides in the shadows."

  He looked back at Ravik, his sockets glowing with glacial intent.

  "You are vermin of these dunes. You know the hidden crevices. You will be our eyes. You will be the hounds that flush out the prey our mindless ones cannot find."

  "You want us to be shepherds?" Ravik barked a hollow laugh.

  Myrrakhael's green fire flared, throwing their shadows long across the camp. "We require guides for the slaughter. You mistake this for a negotiation."

  At the edge of the clearing, one of the infected demons lurched forward. With a single motion, it seized a nearby cannibal and sank its jagged fangs into the man's neck, muffling any chance of a yelp.

  The tribe froze.

  Velcryn's tone was almost gentle. "We do not wish to cull you. But nature does not care for wishes. Serve us, and live. Deny us, and join the ash. You are a small force here, but numbers are numbers. You would serve better alive, for now."

  No one moved. Even the wind seemed to pause.

  Ravik's heart pounded against his ribs. The weight of his people's eyes pressed on him from every side, pleading and desperate. The smell of death was already in the camp; it had been for months. All the liches had done was make it honest.

  He looked at the chilling blue eyes of Velcryn. He looked at the gathered infected waiting for a command.

  "If we serve," Ravik whispered, "we eat?"

  "You will no longer hunger," Myrrakhael promised.

  Ravik turned to Varkir, who nodded solemnly. They had no options left; his choice was made.

  Myrrakhael drifted forward, his green light dimming to a faint glow. "Decisions, decisions. Live or die."

  Ravik's shoulders sagged with defeat. "We will join you," he said, looking at the lichlords.

  "As expected," Velcryn rasped. "Myrrakhael, if you would."

  "With pleasure."

  Myrrakhael drifted forward, his green light dimming to a faint, rotten glow. He reached out a skeletal hand and pressed it flat against Ravik's chest.

  The air hissed with the wet sound of searing meat. A green flame erupted from the bone, eating through the rags and biting into the skin. When Myrrakhael pulled away, a handprint of charred, smoking flesh remained, glowing with emerald embers stamped into the meat like a brand on cattle.

  Ravik's knees buckled, the smell of his own cooking flesh filling his nose, but he didn't cry out. A stern face met those terrible green sockets.

  "You bear my mark now," Myrrakhael said, smoke drifting from his fingers. "Through it, I will know if you keep faith."

  Varkir stepped up beside him before the pain even faded. "If he serves, I do as well."

  Velcryn's sapphire eyes flared, cold and judging. "Then you too shall bear it."

  He reached out, his touch the polar opposite of his brother's.

  Varkir screamed as absolute zero slammed into his chest. Frost crystallized over his heart, turning the skin black with sudden frostbite. When Velcryn pulled back, a handprint of white rime smoked in the cold air.

  "The cold preserves," Velcryn whispered, his voice like cracking ice. "Do not give me a reason to shatter you."

  The rest of the tribe watched in silent dread.

  Velcryn turned, the frost of his aura brushing across the gathered cannibals. "We require additional bodies. A century has passed since we terrorized the Infernal Wastes. Tell me, Ravik, do the demons still hold Shatterdeep?"

  Ravik clutched his chest, breathing hard. "They do, my lord. But last night..." He hesitated, glancing at the finger-bone necklace around his throat. "Last night, we met travelers."

  Velcryn stopped. He rotated slowly in the air, his blue robes trailing frost. "Travelers?"

  "Three of them," Ravik rasped. "One was a demon. Massive. Slate-gray skin. An Iron-Born."

  "An Iron-Born walking the open Wastes?" Myrrakhael mused. "Unusual, they used to travel in packs."

  "He spoke of a camp," Ravik continued, desperate to prove his worth. "He called it Ironclaw, east of the ridge we camped near. From here, at least two days northeast."

  Velcryn's brow furrowed, the frost on his skull cracking. "Ironclaw? I do not know this name. It was not there when we waged war."

  "I believe it's a new fortress," Ravik said.

  "A new scar on old skin," Velcryn scoffed. "Built by cowards who forgot how to fight in the open."

  "Who were the others?" Myrrakhael demanded. "You said three travelers. An Iron-Born... and who else?"

  Ravik swallowed, his throat feeling like it was lined with glass. "One was... dead. But walking. A man in tattered robes who smelled of the grave."

  The two liches exchanged a look.

  "A necromancer, perhaps," Velcryn murmured. "In the Wastes? Another child of bones so far from home."

  "And the third?" Myrrakhael pressed.

  "A boy," Ravik whispered, his voice trembling with a fear he couldn't justify. "He looked sickly, lord. Weak. But when he looked at me... his eyes. They burned with a red light that made my very blood feel like it was trying to escape my veins."

  Velcryn's sapphire eyes flared. He dropped from the air like a stone idol.

  He hit the ground with a crash that shook the camp, dust geysering up around his bony feet. Ravik lost his footing and scrambled backward, falling hard onto his back. Before he could move, Velcryn was over him.

  The lich leaned down, his skeletal face inches from Ravik's nose. The cold radiating off him was absolute, turning the skin on Ravik's cheeks a waxy, dead black.

  "Tell me of the boy's eyes," Velcryn commanded, his voice a whisper that cracked like a frozen lake. "Why do you tremble for a sickly child?"

  "I don't know!" Ravik gasped, the air freezing in his lungs until Myrrakhael's green brand flared on his chest, fighting back the frostbite with viridian heat. "It wasn't just fear. It was like a memory in my bones. When he looked at me, I felt like a dog facing a wolf. I felt like... like a slave looking at a master who had come to reclaim him."

  Velcryn pulled back, ascending again. The frost on his robes crackled as he clenched his skeletal hands.

  "Red eyes," Velcryn murmured. "It cannot be. Nethervale has long since been a tomb. They were destroyed."

  Myrrakhael drifted closer, his green sockets flickering with impatience. "Who cares for the color of a boy's eyes, Velcryn? We are here for the source, the root of this rot. The infection is spreading, and we waste time on a sickly traveler."

  Velcryn's sapphire gaze snapped toward his companion. "Do you forget the Underworld's history so easily? Those terrible red eyes belong to the Sangrathi. If a Sangrathi has risen from the ashes of Nethervale, there is a chance this plague is not a mere accident. It could be connected to the boy."

  The cold intensified as Velcryn looked back down at Ravik, who was still trembling on the ground.

  "If he carries that blood," Velcryn whispered, "then we must find him before he reaches the deep places."

  "And how?" Myrrakhael asked, his green flames steadying. "The Wastes are vast, and the boy is small."

  Velcryn straightened, his skeletal hands beginning to weave a pattern in the air. "Ravik said they spoke of a camp. Ironclaw. If it lies due northeast, and they intend to warn their masters of what they've seen, there is only one logical path to the capital."

  "The Hollow Canyons," Myrrakhael finished, the strategy clicking into place.

  "Precisely," Velcryn's voice took on a predatory edge. "If my memory serves, there are demon outposts along the southeastern rim. We will not hunt the boy directly; we will shepherd him. Send the infected to the outposts, flush the demons out, and let the panic do our work. Word will spread to Ironclaw that the Wastes are closing in. They will be forced to take the high road through the Canyons."

  Velcryn looked toward the dark horizon, toward the path to Shatterdeep. "And when they enter that throat of stone, we will be the gate they cannot pass."