The sun had not set. It never truly did. It had merely slumped behind the jagged ridges of the dunes, like a weary giant crouching but never quite lying down. The light—amber and copper—still bathed the desert in a dull glow.

  Marc felt his muscles tense. He had not yet understood this world, not yet grasped its rhythms, but his body knew. The day’s heat was evaporating fast.

  The caravan had halted in a hollow between two dunes, a strategic fold in the land. Nothing was left to chance here. The traces of previous bivouacs were still visible: circles of black stones arranged in spirals, cold ashes, bones gnawed clean to the marrow.

  The slaves were herded toward the center, chained in groups of five to a central stake driven into the packed sand. The chains rattled, metallic, and Marc noted how the links articulated—no rust, no slack. Good craftsmanship. Well-maintained iron. Professional.

  The guards spread out in a loose semicircle, close enough to watch, far enough to avoid sharing the stench. They spoke in low, guttural voices, punctuated by dry laughs that held no joy.

  Marc watched them from the corner of his eye, analyzing their movements more than their words.

  The first, a broad-shouldered man with square shoulders, ate first. Grilled meat, blackened on the outside, bloody within, drenched in a thick liquid that smelled of burnt caramel. He offered a bite to the second, a leaner man with star-shaped scars on his forearms. The third, a youth with pale eyes, did not touch the food. He watched the slaves, fingers tight around the hilt of his short sword.

  A novice. Or a paranoid.

  Marc sat cross-legged, back against the stake, wrists wrapped in chains. He was not hungry. Not yet. But thirst was beginning to claw at his throat, a dull itch at the back of his palate. In two days of marching, he had learned to recognize the warning signs: tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, lips cracking, the smell of dust seeming to cling inside his skull.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the desert. The hiss of embers, the scrape of chains, the rasp of a throat being cleared farther off. And, very distant, like a faint echo, the low rumble of something massive—an animal? A machine?

  No. No machines here.

  He opened his eyes again. Night on Akheros was not black. It was reddish, as if the sky itself were slowly bleeding.

  The man approached almost silently. His sandals, thick leather studded with metal, barely sank into the sand. He wore a leather mantle, tanned with dried blood. At his belt hung a pouch heavy with coins and a short, double-edged dagger, forged from a dull gray-brown metal.

  He carried a bulging waterskin, swollen like a pregnant woman’s belly, and a wax tablet dangling from his belt by a leather strap.

  Marc watched him move among the rows of slaves, passing from one to the next with calculated slowness. He did not pour the water. He measured it. Three sips per head, not a drop more. The skin tilted just enough for the liquid to flow in a thin, controlled stream.

  One of the guards glanced up at him and muttered a word under his breath:

  "Morkh."

  Marc caught it. His name. He repeated it mentally. Mor-kh. Hard, brief, without melody. A word of calculation, not poetry.

  The man—Morkh—wore neither blade nor armor. But he carried a wax tablet and a bone stylus. He touched the slaves, inspected them with precise fingers, like a butcher evaluating a cut of meat.

  He did not mark them. He counted them.

  He noted. He weighed. He measured.

  An administrator? No. Too cold. Too detached.

  A scribe? Perhaps. But his gaze moved from bone to skin, from muscle to the size of teeth, as if assessing not a man, but a product.

  And he spoke in low tones to the guards, exchanging small pouches that glinted in the light.

  Coins. Blood price. Goods.

  A merchant. The word settled slowly. Not war. Trade.

  When he reached Marc, he paused. For a long time.

  His slender fingers closed around Marc’s bicep, testing the density of the flesh.

  Marc did not flinch. In the Legion, he had learned to endure inspections. You do not recoil. You do not blink. You are a wall.

  — Korv… Morkh murmured, frowning.

  Marc did not understand the word, but the tone was clear: surprise. Not fear. Interest. As if the man had just found a strange coin in his purse.

  He probed higher, toward the shoulder, then brushed the clavicle, where Marc’s muscles strained beneath the skin, taut as cables.

  He’s checking the bones, Marc realized. He’s weighing the mass.

  Morkh leaned in, his breath thick with burnt spices.

  He said something to the nearest guard, a quick phrase accompanied by a gesture toward Marc. The guard shrugged, indifferent, but his eyes flickered with something new.

  Curiosity. Or greed.

  Morkh held out the waterskin. The liquid had the viscosity of nectar, tinged red like oxidized wine. Marc drank—copper and sea salt burned his throat, then spread into a warm glow. No rot, no sickness: the water was hard, like the world that had shaped it. He set the skin down without a word.

  Morkh studied him a moment longer, then moved on. But before leaving, he cast one last glance over his shoulder, as if to confirm Marc was real.

  Night on Akheros was not rest. It was a tense pause.

  Marc lay on his side, eyes half-closed, muscles still aching from the shackles and the forced march.

  Around him, the other captives breathed heavily, some snoring, others whimpering in their sleep. He had no such luck. His body, forged under crushing gravity, refused to let go. Every fiber of his terrestrial muscles reminded him he was not made for this elastic world, where shadows stretched like dough and the guards’ footsteps rang with an almost mocking lightness.

  He listened.

  The warriors spoke among themselves, crouched near a small campfire whose flames danced in long, blue tongues, as if the wind itself were too light to bend them.

  Their voices were low, rough, punctuated by guttural laughs and metallic clinks—the sabers they constantly adjusted, the plates of their breastplates they tapped with their fingertips, as if reassuring themselves of their presence.

  Marc closed his eyes, letting the sounds filter through the haze of fatigue. He did not need to understand the words. Not yet. He had learned Tamashek in three weeks in Mali, not by studying manuals, but by listening to old Tuaregs bark orders between sips of scalding tea. Here, it would be the same. The language would come. By necessity.

  Certain words recurred, hammered like nails.

  Karsak.

  The guard had pointed at Marc while growling this term earlier, when he had thrown him the waterskin. The tone was unmistakable, thick with contempt so palpable it was almost tangible.

  Marc now observed the other captives, their chains clinking with every movement, their slumped shoulders, their averted gazes. Karsak. The word clung to their skin like a brand.

  Slave. Cattle. Meat that walks.

  Marc studied their silhouettes, the way they held themselves—straight despite exhaustion, broad shoulders beneath black metal breastplates. Their weapons never far. Their eyes always moving, calculating, assessing. Predators. Men for whom weakness was an insult, and pity, a sickness.

  Tulwar.

  The word slipped into their conversations like a caress on a blade. Sometimes, one of them would draw his weapon, turn it in the coppery light of the sky, watching the reflection dance on the metal. An obsession. An extension of themselves.

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  Marc clenched his fists, feeling the phantom weight of his Famas against his shoulder, the cruel absence of the stock beneath his fingers.

  Here, no safety distance. No magazine to check. Just the naked edge, the promise of contact.

  Tulwar.

  A syllable that sounded like a challenge.

  Fer.

  This one, they pronounced differently. Not as a word, but as a prayer. Their voices dropped an octave, as if afraid of being overheard by something greater than themselves. Their fingers would then brush the guards of their weapons, the plates of their armor, as if to confirm their reality. Fer.

  Not just metal. A truth. A law.

  Then there was the other word. Spat. Like phlegm in the dust.

  Drel.

  One of the captives, a man with protruding ribs and feverish eyes, had groaned too loudly in his sleep.

  One of the armed men had sprung up, crossed the circle of firelight in a stride, and kicked the man in the ribs. The captive had curled up, coughing, lips flecked with foam.

  The guard had snarled the word, Drel, before spitting on the ground and returning to the fire. The other guards had laughed, but it was a joyless laugh, a laugh that said: that one is already dead.

  Marc noted the word. Not just in his mind. In his gut.

  Drel.

  Something worse than a slave. Something you eliminate without remorse.

  He did not need to understand full sentences. Not yet. He already understood the structure. Subject-verb-object, probably. Orders were short, one or two syllables, barked like commands.

  Stand. March. Silence. A soldier’s language. A dominant’s language.

  He closed his eyes, letting the sounds imprint on his memory. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would understand more words. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would understand why he had been handled like a butcher evaluating a quarter of beef.

  For now, he listened.

  And he waited.

  The guard approached silently—or at least, what passed for silence in this world where sand did not crunch underfoot, where dust settled with an almost insulting slowness.

  Marc sensed him before he saw him—a shadow blocking the coppery light of the sky, a presence warping the air around it, like a white-hot blade.

  He opened his eyes.

  It was the Scarred One. The scar ran from his left temple, slashed diagonally across his cheek, and vanished beneath the collar of his breastplate. An old wound, poorly stitched, pulling at his upper lip when he smiled. Which, at that moment, looked more like a wolf’s snarl than anything else.

  The man wore no helmet. His black, oiled hair was pulled back, revealing a broad forehead marked by years of sun and battle.

  He drew his Tulwar in one fluid, almost nonchalant motion, as if plucking a thorn from his finger. The blade appeared—long, slender, curved like a black crescent moon. It absorbed light rather than reflecting it, as if made of something darker than shadow itself.

  Marc did not move. He watched.

  The man had not come to threaten him. Not to strike him. He had come to show. Like a father displaying a toy to his child—not to give it to him, but to remind him of what he could never have.

  — Tul-war, the Scarred One growled.

  His voice was rough, as if each word had to pass through a metal filter before escaping. He spoke slowly, enunciating each syllable, like baiting a trap. Then he tapped Marc’s back with the flat of his blade. The metal rang dully, and Marc felt the vibration ripple through his ribs.

  — Karsak, he said, pointing at Marc with the tip of his sword.

  Then he struck his own chest, just above the heart, where the breastplate was thickest, most ornate, bearing some kind of metallic insignia.

  The man laughed fiercely.

  The message was clear. Brutal in its simplicity.

  Marc did not look away. He fixed his gaze on the blade, studying its edge. The way the light slid along its curve, like oil on skin. The thin reddish line near the guard, where the metal must have been tempered, then polished again and again, until every imperfection was erased.

  It was a beautiful weapon. Deadly.

  The Scarred One smiled—or at least, his scar twisted into something resembling a smile. He made the blade dance before Marc’s eyes, turning it to show the engraved patterns near the guard: intertwined lines, like veins or roots. Then he pressed it against his own throat, just enough for a drop of blood to well up, dark red, almost black in this light.

  — Fer, he murmured.

  Fer—finally, a word Marc understood. The implication was obvious.

  Marc did not reply. He had nothing to say. Not yet. But his fingers, imperceptibly, tightened. Not in fear. In calculation.

  The Scarred One noticed the movement. His eyes—so dark they were almost black—gleamed with amusement. He sheathed his Tulwar with a sharp click, then leaned in so close Marc could smell his breath, warm and spiced.

  — Karsak, he whispered.

  Then he straightened and walked away, leaving Marc alone with the weight of that word, resonating like a threat.

  Around them, the other captives still slept. Or pretended to.

  The guard approached Elena with calculated slowness, the kind of a man who knows he doesn’t need to hurry. He carried a waterskin of animal hide, swollen, greased to prevent leaks. The liquid inside sloshed in uneven bursts.

  Marc watched him from the corner of his eye, muscles tense beneath feigned indifference. He knew this game. Deprivation, offering, submission.

  The guard said nothing. He simply held out the waterskin to Elena, shaking it slightly so the contents sloshed. She hesitated. Her fingers trembled—not in fear, but in suppressed rage.

  Marc saw her jaw clench, her nostrils flare. She would not yield. Not like this.

  Then the guard spoke. A sharp, guttural command in that language Marc was beginning to decipher in fragments.

  "Drink." Not a suggestion. An order. Elena didn’t understand the words, but she understood the tone. Her eyes—too green for this world of rust and ash—narrowed. She reached out.

  The waterskin was heavy. More than she expected. She lifted it to her lips and drank. One sip. Then another, too fast. Her face twisted at once. The taste—harsh, with a sulfurous bitterness—scraped her throat raw.

  She coughed, eyes watering, and the guard chuckled. A thick, satisfied sound. He repeated his order, louder this time, emphasizing it with a jerk of his chin.

  Elena gritted her teeth. But she drank again. More slowly. Her fingers, clenched around the neck of the skin, whitened under the pressure. She swallowed in small sips, forcing her body to accept the brew.

  Marc observed every detail. The way the guard stood—legs spread, weight back, ready to strike if she resisted. The way Elena tilted her head, not in submission, but in calculation. She was learning. Despite herself. Despite the rage twisting her gut, she already understood the first rule of this world:

  Here, nothing is given. You are allowed to take.

  When she finished, the guard snatched the waterskin from her hands and walked away without a glance. Elena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She did not look at Marc. She didn’t need to. She knew he had seen everything.

  The day’s heat stretched, thinned, but never vanished. The sun—that reddish orb, too large, too low in the sky—refused to set. It merely slumped, like a weary giant crouching but never quite lying down. Its light, a dirty copper, bathed the bivouac in a dull glow, as if the air itself were infused with metal dust.

  Marc remained seated, his back against the central stake, the chains chafing his ankles with every movement. Around him, the other captives had collapsed into forced sleep, some snoring, others whimpering in half-sleep. No one spoke. No one moved more than necessary. Energy was measured in conserved gestures.

  Three moons.

  The silvery one, the largest—as big as that monstrous sun—dominated the sky like an indifferent queen. Its glow was cold, almost tinny, like a coin worn smooth by centuries of trade.

  The other two, smaller, greenish, darted across the horizon in an endless chase, sometimes brushing past each other before veering apart again. Marc watched them for a long time. Their movement was too fast, too erratic. Nothing like Earth’s moon, slow and majestic. Here, even the stars seemed hurried. Agitated.

  He closed his eyes.

  Not to sleep. To listen.

  The wind lifted murmurs of sand against the leather tents, a dry, almost metallic whisper. Somewhere, a guard coughed, spat. The wet sound muffled in the dust.

  Farther off, a drakos—or something like it—growled in its sleep, a guttural sound like a dull saw on green wood.

  No coolness. Even the night changed nothing. Only a drop in the intensity of the ochre light, as if the sun, instead of setting, was holding its breath.

  Marc pressed his hand against the stone. Warm. As if it retained the day. As if this entire realm were nothing but red-hot iron refusing to cool.

  Here, time was not measured in hours. In fatigue. In endured silences.

  And he, Marc, was nothing more than a grain in the crucible.

  The camp stirred awake in a clatter of chains and stifled curses.

  First came the chains, shackling their feet—prars, he thought he’d caught—tinkling like broken ice bells under boots.

  The slaves—those called karsaks—rose in silence, their limbs stiff from the "relative" cold of the night that wasn’t one.

  Their shadows stretched long and misshapen, cast by that coppery glow that had never quite left the sky. No sunrise here. No clean transition from darkness to day as he knew it. Just that reddish thing, crouched on the horizon like a half-licked beast, refusing to die or fade. An open wound in the firmament.

  Marc remained still, sitting cross-legged near the embers of a nearly dead fire. He watched.

  The guards—broad-shouldered men with square shoulders, clad in boiled leather and black metal plates—barked orders in that guttural tongue that reminded him of the growls of war dogs he’d encountered in Afghanistan.

  Their voices rang like hammer blows on an anvil—short, sharp, without melody. No sentences. Chopped syllables. Commands.

  "Up. Water. March." The bare minimum. The rest was implied in hand gestures, the press of a staff against a nape, the snap of a taut chain.

  A karsak—a man with jutting ribs and sunken eyes—stumbled as he rose. A guard struck the back of his knees with the haft of his spear. Not hard enough to break bone, just enough to drop him to his knees in the dust.

  The slave did not even whimper. He rose again, slow, methodical, as if he had learned that pain was the price of oxygen.

  Marc noted the way his fingers gripped the links of his shackles before straightening. No hatred in the gesture. Just calculated resignation.

  A professional, Marc thought. A man who had learned that rebellion was a luxury, and survival was measured in conserved movement.

  Then came the moment when the beasts began to stir.

  The drakos—those reptilian mounts as long as horses but twice as broad in the shoulder—shifted beneath their bastion-saddles, their jaws muzzled by heavy iron bits. Their eyes, yellow and slit like a serpent’s, blinked lazily, indifferent to human misery.

  One of them exhaled through its nostrils, sending out a cloud of vapor that smelled of sulfur and spoiled meat.

  A guard bellowed an order. Two karsaks—women, this time—stepped forward with swollen leather waterskins. They held them out to the warriors without meeting their eyes, arms extended, palms up, like supplicants offering a sacrifice. One of the men grabbed a skin, took a swig, then hurled it back into the woman’s face without a word. She did not flinch. Just a tremor of the shoulders, as if she had anticipated the insult before it came.

  He rose in turn, rolling his shoulders to shake off the stiffness. His muscles responded with irritating slowness, as if still refusing this treacherous gravity, this lightness that made every movement a calculation.

  On Earth, a hundred and fifteen kilos of flesh and bone would have crushed the ground beneath his boots. Here, he felt as if he were walking on springs. An unpleasant sensation. As if the world itself were pushing back, refusing to acknowledge his weight.

  A guard jostled him as he passed, without so much as a glance. Marc did not react. He had learned that, too.

  The caravan was moving out again.

  Ahead of him, the trail stretched eastward, a pale scar in the reddish rock. Somewhere, at the end of that broken line, lay Ka-Rosh. A city, he had heard. A place where walls were made of stone and metal, and men fought for the right to breathe.

  Until then, he would listen.

  He would learn.

  And he would wait for his moment.