Over the dunes of the Cinder Fields, the wind spat out a pair of demons in a final, cracking gust. Ragith-kar's dust devil unraveled first, his form stitching together from the grit as the light within his horns sputtered and went dark.

  Thra-uk slammed into the slope with a jarring impact, sending a wall of ash cascading around him. Ragith-kar landed nearby, chest heaving in ragged gasps as he braced his hands on his knees.

  Ragith-kar straightened, glaring at his partner. "You get heavier every cycle."

  Thra-uk slapped a thick, clawed hand against his calcified chest. The sound was like a hammer hitting an anvil. "Weight is strength, brother."

  "If you were lighter," Ragith-kar hissed, "I wouldn't have to drag you through the slipstream like dead weight."

  Thra-uk grunted, pulling his legs free from the crater he'd made. "No more wind," he rumbled, shaking ash from his tusks. He sniffed the air once, a low vibration rolling in his chest. "Scent nearby, not kin."

  Ragith-kar huffed. His voice always held a metallic rasp, like chains dragged along stone. "Outskirt packs are not reliable, damned grunts chase anything that bleeds. How sure are we that it could be Sangrathi?" Ragith-kar's horns sparked with an inner light. "Better be worth our time."

  The pair moved toward the scent, their steps nearly silent. Thra-uk's claws carved deep furrows through the ash, his weight anchoring every stride. Beside him, Ragith-kar seemed to skim the surface, leaving only faint impressions on the grit.

  A splinter of a mountain rose from the flats, its rocky face split by a narrow, vertical crack. From the dark slit, the rhythmic thud of rapidly moving footsteps echoed against the stone, frantic, scraping, and closing fast.

  Thra-uk froze, his ears pinning back against his skull. "Running. Time to smash."

  Both demons lowered into a fighting stance. They approached the mouth of the tunnel, an old demon lair with a stone face cracked like a skull. Darkness yawned inside, smelling of copper and the sharp, acidic tang of the blight.

  An infected demon burst from the opening like a flung corpse. It shrieked, a wet, gurgling sound that sprayed neon-tinted saliva as it lunged with claws twisted into blackened hooks.

  Thra-uk met it head-on with a roar that rattled the stone face of the mountain. He caught the creature mid-air, snapping its neck before ripping the frame in half. Black-green sludge erupted from the carcass, sizzling as it hit the sand.

  More poured out after it, a frantic tide of muscle and bile. Thra-uk braced himself as the wave of infected slammed into him. He was a wall of bone-plating and tusks. Thick hide turned talons aside as his fists landed like falling boulders, crushing skulls and flinging bodies into the red sand. The wave of bile and muscle broke against him.

  Ragith-kar moved around Thra-uk like the wind. Any gap in the brute's defense was filled from his shadow with a pair of crystal blades. The creatures lost their legs in a blur, collapsing into the grit where Thra-uk's raw strength finished them.

  One leapt at the brute's back, jaws wide and dripping green froth. Ragith-kar snapped a blade upward in a reverse grip. The crystal sang through the air, severing the creature's hamstrings mid-flight. It fell flat on its chest at Thra-uk's heels. The Iron-Born stomped once without breaking his rhythm, reducing the head to a paste.

  "Sloppy," Thra-uk said, backhanding a screeching grunt into the mountain face. "Not worth the sweat."

  "You almost missed one. You're welcome," Ragith-kar snapped. The serrated, glass-like horns on his brow began to glow faintly. At his feet, the sands of the Cinder Fields answered his call, crawling upward in thin, abrasive streams to coat his crystalline blades. The grit scrubbed away the black-green ichor in seconds, the grinding sound of sand on glass leaving the edges sharper than they had been at the gates of Shatterdeep.

  Ragith-kar straightened, his glowing horns dimming as the sand finished its work on his blades. He tilted his head toward the dark fissure. "Wait, we missed one. He sounds heavy, brother."

  Thra-uk punched his massive hands together, the impact ringing out. A wicked smile split his tusks. "Good."

  A larger creature erupted from the mountain, a fusion of bone and rot. Its chest was split open, revealing ribs pointing in different directions. It lunged with a guttural roar. Thra-uk met the beast mid-stride, ramming his shoulder into its chest with the force of a falling ridge. The creature flew backward, hitting the mountain wall with a crack that sent dust raining down from the mountain face.

  Before the beast could slide to the floor, Thra-uk drove a fist through its knee. The joint exploded. With a wet snap, the leg buckled backward, sending the creature crashing down to one knee, shrieking in confusion.

  Thra-uk stepped aside, crossing his massive arms over his chest. "Bring the wind."

  Ragith-kar drifted past, his hand blurring to his hip. Crystal sang. He slashed the empty air three times in rapid succession.

  Three compressed wind-waves tore from the glass edges, distorted ripples in the heat that bypassed the beast's torso without slowing. A heartbeat later, the creature fell apart. Large chunks of its chest and flank slid free, severed by the air itself before the remains hit the grit.

  Ragith-kar spun the blades once, shedding the air currents, and slid them back into their sheaths with a click. He stepped closer to the ruin of meat, tilting his head. The blood bubbling from the wounds looked wrong.

  "What manner of creature is this?" Ragith-kar whispered, prodding a severed limb with his clawed feet. "I have never seen flesh twist so."

  "Voices," Thra-uk's tusk twitched as he faced the darkness of the tunnel. "Deeper."

  Ragith-kar rose with a slow, deliberate motion. "Come out," he called, voice carrying into the tunnel. "Step forward now. Or we enter."

  A sharp, irritable voice barked back from the shadows. "We're coming out! Hold your blasted ground!"

  - - -

  The cool air of the passage turned into a thick, humid rot after an hour of trekking through the stone. A stench of decay now assaulted Caldreth and Krim's noses.

  Krim slowed, his hand dropping to catch Caldreth's shoulder. "Quiet," the necromancer whispered, his voice barely a rattle. "Move slowly. When the air smells this much like a grave, the thing that dug it is usually standing right over the hole."

  As they edged forward, wet, tearing thuds and guttural shrieks began to echo down the corridor. Krim gestured with a spindly, ring-adorned finger, creating a dull mote of light. He pushed the orb toward the ceiling and sent it drifting into the dark.

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  The light revealed a pack of infected demons in a tight, twitching circle around a figure on the floor. Behind Krim and Caldreth, the violet-eyed undead stood as silent, stiff watchers. The infected's attention was locked. With a wet, collective heave, they tore open a demon's chest and vomited thick, black sludge into the open cavity.

  Bile burned the back of Caldreth's throat. "That is... monstrous".

  Suddenly, a bone-shattering impact erupted from the corridor's exit. The gathering was interrupted as the blight-stricken demons snapped toward the sound as if pulled by a single wire. The pack shrieked and abandoned the half-melted corpse, a frantic tide of chaos rushing toward the source of the noise.

  Then, silence.

  Caldreth let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "They're gone."

  "Not all of them," Krim murmured, nodding toward the center of the room.

  On the ground, the victim twitched.

  Its chest was a ruin of exposed rib and black tar. Yet, with a wet, sucking sound, it rolled onto its stomach. New, malformed limbs scrabbled for purchase on the floor. It rose, swaying like a drunkard, its head lolling at an impossible angle. It turned and shambled after the pack, dragging a half-formed leg behind it.

  Caldreth watched it disappear into the dark. Krim didn't move for a moment. When he spoke, the clinical edge had gone out of his voice.

  "I've studied blights. Catalogued them. Most burn fast; they consume the host and jump to the next. Dead within hours."

  He turned toward the tunnel's exit, watching the direction the pack had gone.

  "These creatures move together. And what they did to that body-" He stopped. "Blights don't build, Caldreth. They destroy. They don't preserve the host, they don't grow new tissue." His voice dropped. "Something designed this to spread. Not to kill. That's much worse."

  Moments passed before a voice like rasping chains pierced the silence.

  "Come out! Step forward now, or we enter."

  Krim winced. "We're coming out! Hold your blasted ground!"

  Before they moved, the tome settled into Caldreth's back pocket, its ruby glow receding into the pages.

  "It appears your grimoire is shy," Krim smirked.

  "Or, it wishes not to be seen. Make no mention of it."

  The two exchanged a glance.

  "Ready?" Caldreth asked.

  "Not really," Krim muttered. "But let's go."

  With little choice, they rose from their cover and made for the tunnel's exit.

  The oven-dry heat of the Wastes rushed in to meet them, but the searing air no longer bit at Caldreth's skin; it felt like a familiar weight. He stepped into the blinding sunlight without flinching, his sharpened vision cutting through the glare until the massive shapes in front of him resolved into monsters.

  A tusked brute stood over the remains of the pack, black blood sizzling where it hit the sand. Beside the brute, a wiry figure drifted forward, its movements fluid and unnerving like sliding dunes. Translucent, serrated horns swept back from its brow, whistling with a sharp, expectant pitch.

  Krim stopped cold, his eyes locking onto the gore coating the brute's hands. He took a sharp step back, then drove a hard elbow into Caldreth's ribs.

  "Look," Krim hissed, nodding at the demon's claws frantically. "His claws."

  Fluid dripped from the hulking demon's fingers. Scattered before them was a pile of corpses and torsos ripped open like wet paper. Skulls were crushed into indistinguishable grit. One creature had been torn completely in half, its spine trailing out like a snapped wire.

  Caldreth's gaze fixed on the mountain of gray muscle standing before him. Something in his marrow recognized it before his mind did, the specific wrongness of a thing built entirely to absorb punishment and return it threefold. He had no name for the recognition. He simply knew it, the way he knew how to hold a blade.

  A cold knot tightened in his chest. Looking at the sheer, crushing mass of the creature, the idea of a blade finding purchase seemed laughable. The Grave Watch steel in his hand would snap like kindling if that thing closed the distance.

  Then a pulse throbbed from his back pocket. A cold surge of predatory intent spiked through his nervous system, dragging the heat from his fear and leaving something harder in its place. He drew the Grave Watch blade in a single motion and dropped into a defensive stance.

  "Back!" Caldreth shouted, leveling the blade at the demon, the tome's influence running through him like iron, refusing to let its vessel break before another harvest.

  A slow smile split the larger demon's face. He slammed a fist into his open palm, the sound like a boulder cracking.

  "Finally," the brute said, cracking his knuckles one by one. "Something to break."

  It took a heavy step forward, the ground trembling beneath its weight.

  "Stay your blade, little one," the horned demon said, his voice drifting across the sand like dry wind. He watched them with his orange eyes. "Thra-uk will turn you to paste before you can finish your next breath."

  "Wait!" Krim yelled. "His hands!"

  Thra-uk paused, turning his claws over.

  "The blood!" Krim pointed a trembling finger at the gore dripping from the brute's skin. "A blight, it's in the blood! We saw it in the mountain!"

  He swept his arm toward the scattered remains of the pack the demon duo had just butchered.

  "They were infected. And now you're covered in it!" Krim insisted, his voice pitching up.

  The moment the words left Krim's mouth, the demon sporting a pair of curved blades moved.

  A sharp spiral of wind kicked up at his feet, dissolving his lower legs into a blur of grit. In a heartbeat, he shot backward, putting twenty feet between himself and his Thra-uk. He landed in a crouch, his hands gripping the hilts at his hips.

  Thra-uk blinked, looking from his gore-soaked hands to his partner. He scowled, insulted. "Ragith-kar?

  "It needs a way in!" Krim shouted, his hands still raised in a placating gesture, though he kept his distance. "Open cuts, eyes, the mouth. It takes twenty seconds for the madness to set in. Did you ingest any? Did it get into a wound?"

  Thra-uk scoffed, wiping his hands on his thighs, smearing the blighted blood against his skin. "My hide is unbroken."

  He took a step toward them.

  "Hold," Ragith-kar commanded. The crystal blades slid an inch from their sheaths, singing a high, warning note.

  Thra-uk stopped, his brow furrowing. "Brother?"

  "The stranger has a point," Ragith-kar said, his eyes narrow and unblinking. "I have walked these Wastes for centuries with you. I have never seen flesh mutate such as that, have you?"

  He kept his gaze focused on Thra-uk, tension coiling in his shoulders.

  "We wait twenty seconds. If you are still yourself... then you may move."

  Thra-uk huffed, but he planted his feet and crossed his massive arms. "The small one breaks after."

  "You will do no such thing, Thra-uk."

  The seconds stretched, marked only by the hiss of wind against stone. Thra-uk stood like a statue. Ragith-kar searched for any signs of change.

  Ten. Fifteen.

  Thra-uk growled, a low vibration in his chest. He flexed his fingers. The blood didn't bite; it just dried, sticky and foul.

  "Done," the Iron-Born snapped. "Satisfied?"

  "Yes," Ragith-kar replied, the tension bleeding from his frame. The crystal blades slid back into their sheaths with a synchronized click.

  Krim let out a long, ragged breath. He lowered his hands, though he kept a wary eye on the brute.

  "See?" Krim exhaled. "He's clean. No black veins. No pale eyes."

  Caldreth lowered his sword, though he didn't sheath it. He stepped up beside the necromancer, his gaze flicking between the two hunters. The immediate threat of infection was gone, but the threat of violence remained.

  Ragith-kar turned his attention away from Thra-uk. He drifted toward the strangers, his movements fluid and unnerving, like sand sliding down a dune.

  "You speak of this infection with suspicious clarity," the Sandsworn noted. A gust of wind blew the top of Krim's robes open, revealing the pentagram etched into his chest. "And you wear the marks of a death-caller. Did you brew this filth?"

  He stopped a few paces away, his horns slightly aglow.

  Krim didn't flinch under the accusation. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, back toward the darkness of the cavern.

  "If I brewed it, I wouldn't be standing here warning you. I'd be watching you rot," he snapped. "The proof is back there. We ran into a pack in the tunnels. We watched a warrior of your kin take a spray of that black blood to an open cut and turned mad."

  Krim pointed to the corpses around them.

  "Black veins, white eyes, frothing at the mouth, and a broken mind. He turned on his own kind, savaging the one fighting by his side."

  He shot a pointed glare at Thra-uk, who was removing the last bits of gore from underneath his claws.

  "Unlike some, I realize that not everything is solved with brute force."

  The jagged scar running down Thra-uk's snout twisted as he snarled. "Careful, little bone-man," the Iron-Born rumbled, his veins bulging as he tensed up.

  "Stand down!" Ragith-kar barked, his voice cracking like a whip. He held up a hand, halting the brute in his tracks.

  "But he-"

  "Silence, Thra-uk," Ragith-kar hissed. The Sandsworn turned back to Krim; his suspicion seemed tempered by urgency. "We need information. Not a verdict of Iron."

  He studied the necromancer for a moment, his gaze drifting from Krim to Caldreth, assessing them not just as strangers, but as potential variables in a much larger equation.

  "You have keen eyes for death," Ragith-kar murmured. "Perhaps they have seen other things."

  The Sandsworn stepped closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carried over the wind.

  "What do you know of the Sangrathi?"