We arrived half-dead.

  The storm had broken, but it clung to our bones like wet ash—thick and sour, refusing to lift. The oxen were gone, lost somewhere behind us, swallowed by dunes and silence. No graves. No words. No time.

  The Blemmye took the yoke without protest, and without request. He pulled the wagon like it were his own penance, shoulders bowed like in devotion, out of sheer need. Motion was survival.

  The wagon groaned with every rut, its wheels shrieking like old joints. The canvas was torn, charred, slumped like a shroud. Inside—what little remained: broken crates, dried rations, rusted hinges, a few thin lives.

  I stirred, ribs sharp against skin, tongue dry as bark. I blinked into the sun and hated it for still being there. I saw Mikel, curled in on himself, murmuring in sleep or prayer. We hadn’t eaten properly in days. Hunger had stolen our voices.

  The world changed beneath us. The dunes fell away. Grass returned. Sparse, sun-bleached. And then rock. Unmoving, certain. The horizon stopped drifting.

  I sat up straighter.

  First, I saw a shape—black, unmoving.

  Then another.

  Then more.

  I forced my eyes to focus.

  Bodies.

  They were scattered across the road and ridgeline like torn scripture. Some twisted, some stiff. All draped in heavy black cloth. Mourning garb. Or monastic. Or worse.

  I turned and kicked Mikel’s boot.

  "Up. Gods’ sake, Mikel. Look."

  He stirred. Eyes cracked open. He said nothing when he saw them. What could he say? Poor sod was weaker than me.

  The village came into view as we crested a shallow rise. Thatched and brick. Fire-marked, haphazard. Smoke rose from ovens and pyres alike. Children ran barefoot. Psalms poured from open windows—jagged, unfamiliar, half-prayer, half-exorcism.

  And then—

  The beatings.

  I saw children and wives following a man in black. Sticks, stones, shouts. A figure stumbled and fell. Cheers, like at a festival. Another lay already still, not far off, limbs slack, blood soaking the gravel.

  I climbed from the wagon. My legs were barely legs. I walked, somehow.

  The body nearest to me was cloaked like the rest. I reached. Pulled the hood back.

  One eye—milky, blind. The other: wide, human.

  Mouth drawn too far. Split teeth. One hand clawed, furred.

  My skin crawled.

  Behind me, the Blemmye rumbled, low and certain:

  "The Touched. They are killing the Touched."

  And then he moved.

  I had heard of them. Everyone had. The touched. Those born on cursed days, caught in storms, changed by the land. Sin manifest, they said. Punished not for what they did, but what they were. A wrongness in the flesh.

  But I had never seen one. Not until now.

  The square was full of heat and dust and noise. A boy—barely more than a boy—was on his knees, being lashed by a man in black. He sobbed with each crack of the whip. The crowd was gleeful.

  The Blemmye reached out, seized the man by the wrist.

  And flicked.

  The man flew like driftwood. Struck a wall. Slumped.

  Silence.

  I stepped forward. My voice—forgotten in my own chest—returned. Rough, but still trained.

  "Hear me! Ye shall not be advocate and executioner, not while I yet draw breath and memory of law. I bear the authority of the Old—those charters written when empire had spine and seal! All who lay hands upon the burdened shall be punished, forthwith and without leniency! This I swear, by quill and quarter!"

  They stared at me.

  Then came the laughter.

  A man stepped forward—sweaty, thick in the neck, with a cudgel dangling loose at his side. He didn’t speak first. The priest did.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Older, draped in soot-black linen. Eyes sunken and furious.

  “You who come with old charters and court-born tongue,” the priest said, voice rough with fatigue, “do you think we kill from pleasure? We have suffered. We have seen the turning. The time of punishment is long gone, this is prevention.”

  I held my ground. “Prevention by slaughter? These souls were twisted by fate, not fault. Who are you to kill the already punished?”

  The man with the cudgel laughed. “Who are you to stop us?”

  The priest’s voice sharpened. “Where does your truth come from? From scrolls? From law scribbled in safer times? We heed what has happened here. One of them turned. It killed the goatherd’s child. Spewed rot from its mouth, and fled into the hills. You think this is sickness, goodman? It is evil.”

  My mouth went dry.

  They… can turn?

  The priest went on, voice growing louder with the gathered fervor behind him.

  "There was a man—old beggar, slept by the river with the weeds and frogs. Never harmed a soul. Ate from scraps. Dried his bones in the sun. We let him be."

  He stepped forward now, robes catching light, face hard as the stones underfoot.

  "But when the storm came—he rose. Not a man anymore. Like a thing, a hellspawn summoned. His mouth foamed. His eyes rolled white. He shrieked in three tongues. His body grew—lengthened—bent wrong. He struck down the goatherd’s child. Then he fled into the hills, wailing like the damned."

  He pointed to the limp body near the square.

  "They turn," he said. "They break from within. The storm does not pass through them—it stays. It festers. And it spreads.""

  A murmuring started.

  "And the natives?" another voice chimed in—this one bitter, nearer the rear. "They left before it began. Didn’t warn us. Didn’t look back. Just slung their bags, stole our goats, and vanished into the hills. They knew. They knew."

  Someone else: "And now your Blemmye servant raises its hand against us?"

  The Blemmye stepped forward. His shadow long, his form unmistakable. He looked at the priest, and though his voice was slow in coming, it carried deeper than the whip had.

  "You call storm and rot," he said, "but know nothing of either. You are but drifting sand in this land. We were here before your first prayer. We saw the sin. We saw the salvation. And we did not flinch."

  The priest stared, stunned—perhaps more by the words than the speaker. A woman shrieked. A child began to cry. Some in the crowd recoiled, others leaned forward, mouths parted, agape. A few smiled—nervous, bitter things. It was a perfect mirror of the touched: fear, awe, confusion, and fury, tangled in one body.

  I felt something shift in my chest.

  My god, I thought. What have these creatures seen?

  I turned back to the crowd, drew what composure I could. My voice had no thunder, only the cadence of reason:

  "We are headed to Zeltzerheim. The desert behind us is closed. So is the sea. The Great Storm is back. It moves with purpose, and we—all of us—must find shelter where the walls are thick and the sentries sharper."

  I was tired, hoarse and hungry. And they were tired too. Maybe that is why they listened.

  "Let us bring the touched with us," I continued. "In chains if must be, but hold your wrath. Let them walk with us—so they may be properly seen, tested, treated. Whatever court remains must judge them. Not fire. Not rumor. Not grief."

  I looked to the priest. Then to the cudgel-bearer.

  "You do not have to forgive. Only wait. Only withhold the next blow.

  Then, for the first time, I let myself look—not at the dead, but the ones who remained. The ones still kneeling. Still watching.

  The Touched.

  They were ringed at the edges of the square—kept apart, guarded by glances more than arms. Old ones, hunched and trembling, their skin warped like burnt paper. A girl with no lips and perfect eyes. A boy whose ears pulsed like petals. One man so thin you could see the ridges of every rib, but his hands—his hands were furred like a beast’s. Twisted, strange, obscene in ways I could not name.

  But none of them ran.

  None lifted their arms.

  Some wept. Some stared, dry-eyed, as if already spent. One mouthed a word, again and again, with no sound. A prayer, or a name, or nothing at all.

  They did not speak.

  But they watched.

  One of the Blemmyes—taller than the other, his skin like riverstone—moved again. Quietly. Purposefully. He stepped through the thinning crowd to where a touched child sat hunched beside a post, knees drawn tight to its chest.

  The child flinched when the shadow fell across them. One eye blinked wrong. A patch of scaled skin along the neck. The child raised no hand, made no sound—only shivered.

  The Blemmye knelt.

  He did not reach far. Only set his open palm in the dust between them.

  The child stared at it. Recoiled half an inch. Then stayed still.

  The Blemmye spoke—softly now, forcing us all to listen with intent, to all who could bear the weight of meaning.

  "We walked east when the storm came. One fell—Orzal. The earth swallowed him. The wind wept. We did not mourn him, no time. We have been mourning since time immemorial."

  He looked up now, not at me, but at the gathering.

  "We were all awakened. All changed. The storm speaks in different tongues, but its touch is familiar. The touched are not strangers to us. They are cut from the same cloth. Twisted, yes. So are we. But not yet broken."

  He rose again, arms low. Faced the priest in a mark of defiance.

  "We will not let them be struck down."

  The Blemmye’s words resonated, hanging heavy in the silence. I saw their effect ripple through the crowd—a mixture of fear, resentment, and reluctant respect. The priest’s mouth tightened, but he made no immediate retort.

  I stepped forward again, firm but weary, knowing the weight of this moment. A hush is needed, to soften the blow.

  "The Blemmye has spoken plainly, and you have heard his truth. We will not move from this path. Zeltzerheim awaits—shelter, answers, and judgment alike."

  My gaze hardened as I met the cudgel-bearer’s defiant eyes, then swept over the gathered villagers.

  "The battle will not be here," I said, my voice stronger now, resolve rekindled. "Move, or die. It matters not to me which you choose. But we will reach Zeltzerheim—all of us."