The dunes stretched endlessly.
Rolling hills of pale gold and coarse gray dust, broken only by the occasional half-buried ruin or twisted tree petrified by time. The sun hung low in the sky, casting long shadows that shimmered in the heat.
They walked in silence.
At first, it was a silence of exhaustion. Then, one of focus.
Each of them watched the sand.
Watched the wind.
Watched the horizon.
Their first encounter came by accident.
A shallow pit, hidden beneath a cresting dune. Talon stepped too close.
The sand collapsed.
"Pit!" he shouted, falling in up to his waist.
Something moved inside.
A clicking sound. Multiple legs. Black and bone-white.
Kieran reacted first, drawing his blade in a single motion.
The creature that burst from the sand was thin and jagged—like a skeletal centipede stretched too long. Its mandibles snapped, clicking in the air as it lunged at Talon's exposed shoulder.
Selene fired a flash of light, stunning it.
Nova was already in motion—her dagger striking low, clean, into a nerve line along its side. It shrieked. Rei kicked it back into the pit. Calla finished it with a controlled blast of fire—short, hot, focused.
Ash settled.
Talon climbed out slowly.
"Well," he said, brushing sand off his shoulder. "Nice to see we can kill something without dying."
The second attack came at dusk.
A swarm of Dormant-class winged beasts—like eyeless vultures made of glass and bone. They came from the south, drawn by the heat of the group's fire.
This time, they were ready.
Selene cast light upward, scattering the swarm.
Kieran struck anything that got too close to Talon, his shadow helping shield their flank.
Nova threw her knives without hesitation—pinpoint strikes that dropped the creatures mid-air.
Calla fed the fire, creating a ring of heat they didn't dare pass.
Rei caught one out of the sky and crushed it with a single strike.
No one fell.
No one froze.
They were moving together now.
Not perfectly—but with rhythm.
By the third day, the team didn't have to speak to fall into formation.
They faced another Awakened-class beast — a hulking creature made of stone and dried sinew. Slow, but strong. Immune to fire. Resistant to light. It charged.
Rei anchored.
Kieran cut at the joints.
Calla kept distance but kept it hot.
Selene blinded the creature mid-step, just long enough for Nova to leap in and bury both blades in its exposed eye seam.
It died fast.
No injuries.
That night, they sat around the fire. No one said much.
Talon wrote quietly in his book. Calla fed the flames.
Rei was the one who broke the silence.
"You're not bad," he muttered.
Calla raised an eyebrow. "Was that a compliment?"
Rei grunted.
Nova smirked.
Even Sera shifted slightly, her hood lowering enough to see her eyes in the firelight.
Selene looked to Kieran. "We're starting to feel like a team."
"We're starting to believe we are," he said.
They still had no map.
No clear path home.
But they weren't dying.
And they weren't alone.