"Sangrathi?" Krim repeated, his voice shifting from wary to bored. He scratched his chin, his rings clicking. "It's interesting you mention them. I'm here on behalf of the Necropolis. My superiors are after as much Sangrathi blood as they can get their hands on."

  The word landed differently than it should have. Caldreth didn't know why. It sat in his chest with a weight that had nothing attached to it, no memory, no image, no explanation. Just the shape of something he couldn't see.

  Ragith-kar's horns flickered with a sharp, suspicious light. "Why come to the Infernal Wastes looking for Sangrathi? They've been extinct for centuries."

  "That's exactly what makes the blood so valuable," Krim noted, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the price of grain. "Their corpses are beyond scarce. The only places left to look are the isolated lands, the corners no one in their right mind would go plodding through just to dig for ghosts."

  "Time is wasted here, necromancer." Thra-uk rumbled, his massive arms crossing over his bone-plated chest.

  Krim offered a thin, cynical smile. "Time is no bother to me, and I rather enjoy hunting ghosts. I'm quite good at it, undead and such."

  Ragith-kar drifted closer, his gaze sliding past the necromancer to lock onto Caldreth. "And the small one? What is his story?"

  Krim turned, catching Caldreth's eye with a look that screamed shut up and let me talk. "Him? I purchased him for cheap in the Necropolis markets. A pack mule to carry my supplies and keep the sand out of my wine."

  Thra-uk scanned their empty hands. "Where are these supplies, mule?"

  "Our luck turned around recently," Krim said. He snapped his fingers toward the dark fissure of the mountain.

  Three violet-eyed thralls loped into the light, their movements stiff and rhythmic. One carried the heavy pack, its dead face a mask of empty obedience.

  Thra-uk's growl vibrated into the sand, his tusks baring in a snarl of fury. "You raise our dead? Mock our kind with darkcraft?"

  Caldreth stepped forward, his face a mask of exhausted irritation. "Those demons were the same as the ones lying in the sand here," he said, his voice flat. "I requested them to be raised. I was getting tired of carrying his things, and I'm not paid enough for manual labor."

  Thra-uk's tusks remained bared, but Ragith-kar's attention shifted. The Sandsworn drifted closer, tilting his head as he locked eyes with Caldreth. The demon took a long, deliberate breath, his nostrils flaring as he scoured the air for a scent.

  "I can smell the necromancer," Ragith-kar whispered. "He reeks of old grave-dust and bitter wine."

  The Sandsworn leaned in until his face was inches from Caldreth's.

  "But the other one... he smells of nothing. Like a void in the wind."

  Krim didn't miss a beat. "Standard market-bought meat," the necromancer cut in, waving a dismissive hand. "They scrub them down with lye in the slave-pits to keep the sickness away. Probably took the spirit right out of him, too. Useful for a mule, less so for conversation."

  Ragith-kar didn't look convinced, his gaze lingering on the nothingness of Caldreth's presence. "A void is a dangerous thing to keep as a servant, bone-man."

  Ragith-kar drifted closer, unclipping a glass bell filled with oily black liquid from his belt. "This must be tested. Resist, and it will be your end."

  He held the glass up to Caldreth's face. "Breathe. Slowly. iron-wine sings in the presence of Sangrathi."

  "Now," Ragith-kar pressed.

  Caldreth exhaled.

  The reaction was immediate, but not what the hunter expected. Rather than boiling or singing, the liquid went still. Its surface flattened into a mirror-perfect stillness that defied the wind of the Wastes, the vibration ceasing all at once. It looked terrified into silence.

  Ragith-kar didn't move. He held the bell steady, his eyes dropping from the glass to Caldreth's face and back again. His horns flickered once, a sharp, uncertain light.

  "It does not sing," he said quietly. "But it does not move either."

  He tilted the bell, watching the liquid hold its mirror-flat surface against all logic, the wind of the Wastes moving around it without touching it. "In three centuries of hunting, I have never seen iron-wine go still." His voice carried no accusation. Just the flat, precise observation of something that didn't fit.

  He leaned in, close enough that Caldreth could see the grain of the demon's sandstone skin. "It acts suppressed," Ragith-kar murmured, almost to himself. "As though something holds it back from what it wants to do."

  His orange eyes moved slowly across Caldreth's face, feature by feature, searching for the thing the wine could smell but couldn't name.

  Thra-uk had seen enough. The brute stepped forward, the heat of him radiating like a furnace, and shoved Ragith-kar aside with one massive forearm. He gripped Caldreth's jaw and tilted his face upward, staring directly into his eyes. The desert sun blazed overhead, washing everything out. He held the stare for a long moment, then released him with a shove hard enough to stagger.

  "Wrong eyes," the Iron-Born rumbled. "These are dead. Skin is too dark." He sniffed once, a low vibration rolling in his chest. "No Sangrathi. A scavenger. Nothing more."

  Ragith-kar straightened, his gaze returning to the unnervingly still surface of the iron-wine. He watched it for a moment longer than necessary, the way a tracker watches a print in the sand that doesn't match the weight of what made it.

  He would check it again later. Away from the brute's certainty. Quietly.

  "Perhaps," the Sandsworn said, and let Thra-uk believe that settled it.

  Krim cleared his throat. "On the subject of Sangrathi." He reached into the deep pocket of his coat with two fingers, producing a small glass vial stopped with black wax. The liquid inside was dark and red, barely a swallow's worth. He held it up between them without ceremony.

  "Found two bodies. A crypt, half a day's walk west. Scavengers had been through before me; most of the blood was gone by the time I arrived." He turned the vial slowly in the light. "This is what I managed to recover. Barely worth the trip, but the Necropolis pays by rarity, not volume."

  Ragith-kar went very still. His horns flickered, orange eyes dropping from Krim's face to the vial with the slow, precise focus of a predator that had just heard something move across the sand.

  "Unstop it," the Sandsworn said quietly. "Hold it over the bell."

  Krim pulled the wax free and tilted the vial toward the open bell.

  The iron-wine moved before the blood did. The black liquid stirred, pulling itself toward the lip of the glass in a slow, seeking roll, like something lifting its head at a familiar scent.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Ragith-kar's eyes snapped to Krim's. His voice dropped to barely a whisper.

  "Just a drop."

  Krim let one fall.

  The iron-wine screamed as the black liquid convulsed, throwing itself against the glass walls of the bell in a violent, rolling churn, the surface fracturing into a thousand agitated ripples. A high, resonant hum rose from the bell itself, climbing in pitch until it bit at the ears.

  Thra-uk took a slow step back, his eyes fixed on the bell.

  Ragith-kar stared at the churning liquid for a long moment. When he looked up, something had shifted behind his eyes.

  "Sangrathi," he said. The word landed like a stone dropped into still water.

  "Dead ones," Krim said. "As I told you."

  Ragith-kar placed a cover over the bell, silencing the noise. "Two bodies," the Sandsworn confirmed. "And the scavengers took the rest of the blood?"

  "What remained of them, yes."

  Ragith-kar's gaze moved to the horizon, then back to the carnage around them.

  "Trail grows cold," Thra-uk said.

  "The Sangrathi trail," Ragith-kar replied. "This one is not." He gestured at the ruin of infected bodies surrounding them, his voice dropping into something harder. "This plague did not travel here. It bloomed. And if it blooms here, it will bloom elsewhere. We need the court to know."

  Thra-uk crossed his arms. "Then we go. Leave these two for the sand. Back to Shatterdeep."

  Shatterdeep.

  The name hit Caldreth like a hand closing around his spine. The tome pulsed once, hot and insistent, driving a single word up through his ribs like a coal pressed against bone.

  Reclaim it.

  Before Caldreth stepped forward, he glanced back at the three thralls standing motionless at the tunnel's edge, Krim's violet-eyed dead, holding position with their blank, empty patience. He looked at the infected remains scattered across the sand. Then he looked at the demons' hands, gore-slicked, exposed, already wiped clean with deliberate care.

  He took a leap of faith.

  "Take us with you," he said. "To your citadel."

  Both demons turned.

  Thra-uk didn't deliberate. He crossed the distance in two strides, one massive hand closing around Caldreth's collar and lifting him clear of the ground with a casual, effortless contempt. The Iron-Born's face was inches from his, tusks framing a slow, humorless smile.

  "Give me one reason," Thra-uk said, "your bones should feed the sand."

  Caldreth met the stare without flinching, his boots hanging in the air. His voice came out even. "Your court will want proof. Intact specimens, not a description." He didn't gesture; he couldn't, with one hand gripping Thra-uk's wrist to take some of his own weight. "And you cannot carry infected remains across the Wastes without risk. One open wound. One moment of carelessness." He held the pause. "You know that. That's why you wiped your hands three times."

  Thra-uk's grip didn't loosen. But his eyes moved, briefly, to his own wrists.

  Caldreth pressed it. "We can carry them. Seal them. You arrive at your court with undeniable evidence and none of the risk." He nodded toward Ragith-kar. "And from what I just watched, you need the court to move fast. Every hour you spend out here finding a way to transport that flesh safely is an hour the blight spreads."

  Thra-uk set him down, not gently, and turned away, his jaw working. "I don't escort scavengers," he said, his voice aimed at Ragith-kar rather than Caldreth. A dismissal disguised as a decision. "Leave them."

  "Before you do," Krim said, stepping forward and raising one finger with the composure of a man who was not just lifted off the ground by a demon. He gestured toward the three thralls at the tunnel's edge. "They're already dead. No open wounds, they don't ingest anything, and they don't complain about the smell." He nodded at the infected remains. "They wrap the heads and carry them. We carry nothing. You risk nothing. And you arrive with proof in hand instead of a story."

  "They are kin-"

  "Thra-uk." Ragith-kar's voice was quiet, but it cut through the snarl like a blade. "Do you want to carry the blighted flesh yourself?"

  The brute's jaw tightened. He looked at the infected corpses. Then at the thralls. Then, at his own hands again, and what had been on them twenty minutes ago.

  The silence stretched long enough to be dangerous.

  "Then let the dead carry the dead," Ragith-kar said, his tone closing the matter before Thra-uk's pride could reopen it.

  "Thra-uk will escort you to Shatterdeep," Ragith-kar continued, turning to the Iron-Born. "I will go ahead. The court needs a warning before the proof arrives, not after."

  Thra-uk grunted. "You leave me with pack mules?"

  "I leave you with the evidence and the only two creatures in the Wastes willing to carry it." Ragith-kar's voice was dry. "Try not to kill them before they arrive. You see any more infected creatures, pulverize them."

  Thra-uk grinned.

  He looked at Caldreth one last time. "Pray you are as useful as you claim," the Sandsworn said. "Thra-uk has little patience for tools that break."

  The wind picked up. Ragith-kar's edges blurred. His form loosened at the margins, skin unraveling into streams of dark sand that rose and merged with the gale. In a heartbeat, he was gone, a spiral of grit climbing fast into the bruise-colored sky, racing east.

  Thra-uk's shoulders sagged a fraction before giving his only order to the strangers in front of him.

  "Wrap the heads. Wastes wait for none. Move."

  - - -

  A wall of ash rolled over the black spires of Shatterdeep as Ragith-kar came apart above the yard, his form shedding the last of the slipstream as he stitched back together from the grit.

  He landed without sound. The yard guards paid him no mind; nothing that came from the wind alarmed them anymore. He was through the war hall doors before the sand finished settling at his feet.

  Even at its stillest, the air within Shatterdeep trembled with low growls, the grind of claw on stone, the restless mutter of demons who could not endure silence. Today was no different. The pyre-braziers cast long shadows across the dark floor as members of the court snarled at each other, tusks bared, shoulders clashing like beasts penned too long together.

  Dagrimor sat on his throne of fused obsidian and bone, his horned head bowed, clawed fingers laced in thought. He did not look up when the great doors groaned open.

  "A problem has arisen," Ragith-kar rasped.

  A member of the court barked a laugh. "You always bring problems. Speak plain before I tear the sand from your lungs."

  Ragith-kar ignored the brute. His pale eyes swept the hall, then fixed on Dagrimor. "Sovereign, the Wastes burn. Not with fire, but with rot. Something twists our kin into things that should not be."

  Malvaghar leaned forward, his silver-tipped horns catching the brazier light. "Back so soon, Ragith-kar? Did you find the Sangrathi, or is this tale of rot a smoke-screen for failure?"

  Ragith-kar reached into his cloak and produced the glass bell. He pulled the stopper free and set it on the arm of the nearest seat. The iron-wine stirred instantly, resuming its slow, restless churn, the memory of Sangrathi blood still alive in the liquid.

  "Two bodies west of the Cinder Fields. Scavengers had most of the blood." His voice was flat. "They are dead, Malvaghar. The iron-wine confirmed it. Are you satisfied, or shall I bring you bones?"

  Malvaghar's eyes dropped to the churning bell. For a moment, the demon's smile faltered, replaced by something older. "So there was a resurgence after all." His fingers found the bone chime at his belt and turned it slowly. "And already stamped out." He looked back at Dagrimor. "It seems the ash-fire found no air to breathe, Sovereign."

  Dagrimor raised his head. His ancient bronze skin gleamed dull in the brazier light. "Where is Thra-uk now?"

  Ragith-kar inclined his head. "Thra-uk remains in the field. He escorts two strangers, a necromancer from the Necropolis and his pack mule. They carry proof of this sickness to present to the court."

  "Outsiders?" Another demon growled. "Slit their throats and burn them. Necromancers poison every land they touch."

  "Not yet," Ragith-kar said. "This rot moves without warning. It would be unwise to dismiss a disciple of the Necropolis. Valuable knowledge lies within those from the land of the dead."

  Dagrimor's eyes narrowed. "You bring strangers to my gates."

  "I bring proof carried by disposables," Ragith-kar replied. "We dare not touch the infected remains without risking the infection. The outsiders can. If they arrive blighted, we burn them at the threshold. If they arrive clean, the court has its evidence."

  Malvaghar's smile was a serpent's coil. "How convenient. Strangers appear the very moment our kin fall to rot. And you invite them into our home?"

  Ragith-kar hissed. "Convenient or not, it spreads. If the court does nothing, it will reach Shatterdeep. And when it does, even your forked tongue will rot in your skull."

  The chamber fell heavy with silence. Dagrimor sat back against his throne, gaze unfathomable. The braziers burned lower, shadows crawling long across the hall.

  "Waiting for Thra-uk is a gamble," the Sovereign rumbled, his voice hardening. "And I do not gamble with the survival of my kind."

  He looked at Ragith-kar.

  "You say this rot moves fast. Then we must move faster. Take your Sandsworn. Ride the winds to the outer posts, Blackcrest, Salt Hollow, and The Ridge. Tell them to abandon their stations."

  A murmur of shock rippled through the court.

  "Abandon them?" A court member snarled. "We hold ground, Sovereign. We do not flee."

  "We consolidate," Dagrimor snapped. "We do not yet know how far this has spread. If this plague turns our kin against us, outposts are nothing but breeding grounds for the enemy. We are stretched thin as it is. I want every warrior, smith, and scout pulled back to the primary defense line."

  He pointed a clawed finger at Ragith-kar.

  "Herd them to Shatterdeep. Warn Vorzan last; he can hold the line until the others are safe. If the refugees bring the sickness with them, burn it out."

  Dagrimor stood, his shadow stretching across the obsidian floor like a dark omen.

  "If this rot dares touch our lands, we will not meet it scattered and weak. We will meet it as an iron fist. Go."

  Ragith-kar bowed low and exited the chamber.

  The court said nothing. They knew the weight of the command. Above, the braziers guttered once more, as though the citadel itself listened.