The sun was almost gone.
What little warmth it had left bled into the dunes, painting the wasteland in bruised gold and violet. The air had grown cooler, thin and sharp like it carried fragments of the night ahead.
They hadn't spoken much since the fall. Just trudged through the sand, each step a small victory over exhaustion.
Reina finally broke the silence.
Her voice was raw, trembling not with fear—but with fury.
"This is all your fault."
Luke didn't look at her. He knew it was coming.
Reina's boots crunched closer. "You think I don't see it? The tournament, the sneaking around—every rule you broke was under my name. You were my responsibility. And now…" Her voice cracked. "Now we're out here, where the air tastes like rust and we're supposed to just—what? Survive?"
Elias kept walking ahead of them, shoulders stiff. His hands were clenched tight enough that his knuckles shone white through the dust coating them.
Reina's voice grew louder. "You think this is a game? You think the Nova just forgot you exist? You've doomed us—doomed me!"
Luke finally turned to face her. The anger in her eyes wasn't simple rage. It was guilt. Fear. A mirror of his own.
"I didn't ask you to follow us," he said quietly.
She laughed—a bitter, broken sound. "You didn't have to. I was ordered to keep you in line. And look where that got me."
Luke didn't respond. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't sound hollow.
The silence that followed was heavy. The only sound was the wind, whistling low through the jagged remains of a rusted beam half-buried in the sand.
Elias stopped walking.
He turned toward the wall in the distance—the towering steel barrier that divided them from the city. His breathing was shallow.
"That's it then," he said. "We're nothing now. Just—thrown out like trash."
"Elias—" Luke began, but Elias wasn't listening.
He strode toward the nearest ruin, a slab of old metal leaning against the sand, and slammed his fist into it. The clang echoed sharp in the empty air.
"After everything—everything we worked for!" he shouted, hitting the wall again. "The shifts! The damn collapse! The tournament! And for what? To be kicked off a wall?"
"Elias, stop."
He didn't. Another strike. Then another. Each one duller, wetter, until the skin on his knuckles split and blood streaked down his arm.
Silo stepped back, uneasy. "Hey—uh—maybe cool it before you break your—"
"Shut up!" Elias snapped, voice raw.
He turned on Luke then, breathing hard, eyes burning with something wild. "You told me to fight, remember? You said if we just tried, if we just pushed, things would get better. That the world would open up for us."
Luke took a careful step forward. "It will. Just not—"
"Not like this?" Elias's lip curled. "We're dead, Luke. Just slower."
He hit the wall one last time, then leaned against it, panting. The cut on his hand dripped into the sand, leaving tiny crimson dots that vanished in moments.
Luke approached him quietly. "Enough."
Elias didn't move. His chest heaved. He stared at the blood on his hand like he didn't recognize it.
Then Luke reached out, grabbed his wrist gently, and said, "You're bleeding. You can hate me later. But right now, we need to keep moving."
Elias's gaze lifted, empty, unfocused. For a long moment he didn't say anything—just breathed through his teeth, the tremor in his shoulders slowly settling.
Then he pulled his arm free and bumped Luke's shoulder as he brushed past him.
"Let's just go."
---
They walked on.
The light was fading fast now. The dunes stretched like waves in every direction, swallowing the last color of the day.
Silo tried to keep the mood light. "You know… if we find water and food, we could build a little house. Maybe start our own city. Call it Midder City—halfway to nowhere."
No one laughed.
Even Silo's grin faltered after a few seconds. "Tough crowd," he muttered.
Reina stayed a few paces behind, muttering curses under her breath. Every so often she glanced back at the wall, its silhouette still visible in the dim light. Her hand kept brushing the insignia on her torn coat—the one that marked her as an overseer.
Now it meant nothing.
The group finally stopped near a cluster of broken structures—half-melted metal frames rising like skeletal fingers from the sand. Luke dropped his pack and sank down, exhaustion catching up with him.
"Here's as good a place as any," he murmured.
Elias didn't argue this time. He just sat a short distance away, staring out into the emptiness. His hands trembled slightly in the dark.
Luke tore a piece of cloth from his sleeve and wrapped Elias's bleeding knuckles in silence.
Elias didn't thank him. But he didn't pull away either.
The desert air was getting colder, the wind cutting sharper through their thin clothes. Somewhere far off, a low mechanical groan echoed—like an old machine still breathing somewhere beneath the dunes.
Reina sat down beside Silo, hugging her knees. "You really think we'll make it through the night?"
Silo shrugged. "I mean… we made it off a wall. Statistically speaking, our luck's on a roll."
"Not funny."
Luke stared out across the dunes. The horizon was fading to black, stars beginning to pierce through the dim haze. For the first time, he saw the night sky in its full spread—thousands of tiny, glittering dots.
He had read about stars too. Seen them in the books the miners smuggled. But like the sun, they were never real until now.
They were terrifyingly beautiful.
He wanted to point them out to Elias, to share that feeling—but when he turned, Elias was staring into the darkness with a different kind of intensity. Not awe—fear.
"Elias?" Luke asked softly.
Elias squinted toward the horizon. "Do you see that?"
Reina looked up. "See what?"
"There," he said, pointing. "Something's moving."
At first, Luke saw nothing—just the shifting shadows of the dunes. Then he caught it: faint silhouettes in the distance. Several of them.
They were walking in a line, too steady to be wind illusions. And they were heading straight toward them.
Reina stiffened. "Guards?"
"No," Luke said slowly. "They're too… uncoordinated."
Silo stood up, squinting into the fading light. "Maybe survivors? Other exiles?"
"Then why aren't they calling out?" Reina asked.
No one answered. The figures kept advancing, slow and steady, like shadows peeling themselves out of the dusk.
The air grew colder. The wind picked up a strange, low hum—like something beneath the sand was vibrating.
Elias took a hesitant step back. "We should move. Now."
Silo tilted his head. "They're still pretty far—"
Then one of the distant figures stopped, its head jerking unnaturally. The others froze in perfect unison.
Luke felt his skin prickle. "Silo."
"Yeah?"
"Run."
Silo didn't ask twice. He turned and bolted, sand flying beneath his boots. The others followed instinctively—Reina clutching her side, Elias stumbling at first before finding his pace. Luke glanced back once and saw the shapes move—fast, almost gliding over the sand, the distance shrinking far too quickly.
"Don't look back!" he shouted.
The desert swallowed their breath, their footsteps, their fear. Only the hiss of shifting dunes followed as the darkness came alive behind them.
Whatever those things were, they weren't human.
And as the last trace of sunlight vanished, so did the illusion that the surface was dead.