The air shimmered with heat and dust.
From the ridge above the canyon, a lone bystander stood — skin tanned, eyes narrow beneath a torn hood.
He spat once, the sound lost in the wind.
"The Kharuun, tribe of the west," he muttered, voice rough as stone. "Born from flame and ash… and now they send him."
Below, figures moved across the fractured earth — warriors stripped to their waists, their bronze skin painted in streaks of soot and ember dye.
Veil-fire flickered faintly across their scars, alive, restless.
And among them — walking quietly through the heat haze — was Gareth.
His skin had darkened like theirs, sunburnt and dry, his clothes torn from travel through the Wildzone.
He didn't speak, didn't look back.
The others gave him distance, whispering his name like it was something half-feared, half-sacred.
From where the bystander stood, it looked as if the earth itself bent slightly beneath Gareth's steps — the air around him rippling with a faint, unseen pressure.
"Never thought I'd see the day," the man said, shading his eyes as the canyon light bled gold and red across the horizon.
"The Kharuun walking beside a foreign ghost."