The scorching sun blazed in the vibrant blue expanse, and the dry wind carried hot, coarse sand across the endless dunes. Rows of thick, cloth-hided tents buried deep in the sand marked the edge of the tribe's territory. Fair-skinned people moved through their morning tasks, their loose tunics and long scarves offering little relief from the heat. A belt around each waist carried tools or weapons—whatever was needed for another day of survival in a land that gave nothing freely.
"Let's run to the oasis!" Dris's voice cracked with excitement, his red eyes gleaming as he broke into a sprint.
"But aren't we advised not to visit? The Rajyam soldiers came to rest there. We might disturb them."
Dris smirked, slowing just enough to look back at his companions. "Why are you fearing that much?" He spread his arms wide, the gesture almost theatrical. "You got me, Dris, as your leader!"
He laughed and beckoned them forward, already turning back toward the horizon. The two boys exchanged worried glances but followed—they always followed. Dris was the one with fire, the one who made things happen, the one who decided what was worth risking.
"Hurry up! We might be able to catch some sand viper."
"No, that thing is quite fast. We'd better not!"
Dris's expression twisted, anger flashing across his features. "Don't be a wuss!"
Their bickering carried across the dunes as they walked, voices rising and falling with the rhythm of an argument that had played out a hundred times before. The adults working nearby paid them no mind. Children fought. Children argued. Children ran off to places they shouldn't go. It was the way of things—until it wasn't.
"When can we live in the Rajyam's capital?" one of his friends asked, the words coming out more wistful than hopeful.
"Hahaha!" Dris's laugh was sharp, dismissive. "We can live in the border province. That's the most possible thing we can expect."
He kicked at a patch of sand, watching it scatter. "We are happy here. Those bastards don't care about us. We, too, are followers of the Lord of Light—even if we live in a barbaric way, as they say." His voice hardened. "They just want us as servants. To do their bidding."
The words came out rough, scraping against something raw inside him. "I hate it."
His friends nodded, their expressions bitter but resigned. It was the truth they all knew but rarely spoke aloud—the truth of being from the border tribes, of being useful enough to exploit but never important enough to protect.
"Speaking of…" One of his friends hesitated. "We have lost one of the tribe members. It was your—"
"Shhh! Stop!"
The other friend's hand shot out, clamping over the first boy's mouth, but the damage was done.
Dris stopped walking.
His friends froze, the air between them suddenly too thick to breathe.
"Dris, calm down. He wasn't thinking straight. He wasn't talking about your sister's death." The friend's voice cracked with desperation. "Hey, say something!"
"Yeah, right! Sorry, brother!"
Dris's hands clenched at his sides, knuckles white. His jaw worked, teeth grinding against words he couldn't shape.
"Move." His voice came out flat. Empty. "We don't have the whole day."
They walked in silence after that. The bickering was gone, replaced by something heavier that none of them knew how to carry.
The oasis appeared after another hour of walking—small, unremarkable, a pocket of green in the endless brown. A pond of clear water, two or three trees offering thin shade against the sun. No soldiers. No tents. No one at all.
"No soldiers!"
"No one is there!"
"Let's race to it!" Dris's energy returned, bright and sharp. "Last one to reach will receive a punch from me!"
"What!"
He was already running, laughter tearing from his throat, the weight of the morning forgotten or buried or burned away by the simple act of movement.
They collapsed at the water's edge, gasping and shoving, and Dris made good on his promise. His friends ended up with swollen faces, though they'd done nothing wrong. He didn't need a reason. He just wanted to hit something.
They lay on the ground afterward, staring at the sky, still bickering about nothing, and between words, Dris smacked them down again. Just because. Just to feel something solid under his hands.
The sun moved. The shadows shifted. The peace stretched thin.
"You three!" A shrill cry cut through the quiet. "What are you all doing here?"
The chief's daughter stood at the edge of the oasis, her face twisted with fury. She was their age, but she carried herself like someone who had already learned that being angry was easier than being afraid.
"Oh no." One of his friends went pale. "Tribe chief's daughter."
"It was ordered by my father that no one was allowed to visit this oasis." Her voice rose with each word. "You three ungrateful brats don't even have respect for your chief!"
Dris's expression twisted. "You little girl." He pushed himself up, meeting her glare with one of his own. "Enough with your shit. There's no one here. Why can't we relax for a bit?"
Her hand flashed.
The slap cracked across his cheek, sharp and sudden. The sound echoed off the water, off the trees, off the silence that followed.
"Your antics will bring suffering to our tribe." Her voice trembled with rage. "Do you know how hard it was to gain access to this area? The Rajyam approval?"
She stepped closer, and her words became something sharper, something meant to wound. "No wonder your sister died. Your childish antics—always getting into danger—endangered her life when you were hunting. You got her killed by the sand vipers."
Dris touched his cheek. The skin was red, stinging, but the pain was already distant. There was something else moving inside him now, something older than the heat, older than the desert.
"You bitch."
His hands shot out before he could think. Before he could stop. Before any part of him that still knew how to be gentle could intervene.
His fingers closed around her throat.
She fell. He was on her before she hit the ground, weight pinning her down, hands squeezing, watching her face change color.
"Dris! Stop!"
"Stop it! You're going to kill her!"
His friends grabbed at his arms, his shoulders, anything they could reach. They pulled. They begged. They threw their weight against his, and still he held.
The chief's daughter clawed at his hands, her legs kicking, her eyes rolling back. She wasn't fighting anymore. She was drowning in air that wouldn't come.
The world narrowed to the space between his palms. To the pulse beating against his fingers. To the thought circling, circling—
I should kill her. I should kill her. I should—
"Run!" His friends' voices broke through. "You fucking idiot! That's the chief's daughter! Run!"
Their arms locked around his chest, dragging him back. The girl collapsed to the ground, coughing, gasping, her face wet with tears and spit and something that might have been fear.
Dris stared at her. His hands were still raised, still open, still ready.
Should I kill her?
But his friends were already running, and their fear was louder than the voice in his head, so he ran too.
The sun fell. The cold came.
The news had spread faster than they could outrun. The tribe knew. The chief knew. And the judgment came swift.
In the chief's tent, a woman wept—pleading, begging, her voice raw with grief. Two more voices joined hers, then fell silent. Their husbands stood motionless, hands clenched, faces carved from stone.
The chief's voice boiled with fury. "I should have ordered those three brats killed on the spot." He stopped, letting the words settle like ash. "But they are mere children. I will order their banishment from my tribe. Get them out." His eyes swept the tent, cold and final. "At the first ray of sun, I don't want to see their faces."
The woman kept crying. The men clenched their hands in acknowledgment.
"We will do as you instructed."
"You ungrateful son!" The man's voice cracked with fury. A long stick rose and fell, each impact driving Dris deeper into his silence. "Go! Get the fuck out of here!"
A woman's voice, thick with tears, cut through the blows. "You know we had to beg for your life! The chief wanted to kill you on the spot!" A pause, a sob, something breaking. "Get out of here! We aren't your father and mother!"
Dris didn't speak. His expression didn't change. His face was twisted, yes—it was always twisted now—but beneath the anger, beneath the heat that had driven him his whole life, something else was forming. Something cold. Something that would never leave.
He was banished.
He wandered the desert with the two boys who had once been his friends, but they were already ghosts, already fading, already not strong enough to survive what he was becoming. One by one, they fell. One by one, they were swallowed by the sand.
And still, Dris walked.
Throat parched. Lips cracked and bleeding. Stomach hollow. Vision swimming at the edges.
But one thought remained. Clear. Sharp. Absolute.
I should have killed her.
The darkness came. The hot sand rose to meet him. And for a moment, there was nothing.
That was the last memory I remember. But what the hell am I going through here?
"Do you accept your sins?"
The voice was flat. Monotonous. And the face looking back at him was his own.
Dris shrugged. "Sure! Sure!"
He didn't know what he was agreeing to. He didn't care. Anything was better than the desert.
He went through hell after that. Trials that broke children and left them in piles. Training that ground soft edges into sharp points. A pocket dimension that swallowed the weak and spat out something harder.
And through it all, he kept moving. Kept fighting. Kept surviving.
These things are tough. The thought surfaced as he faced another worm in the desert, its metallic body slithering through the sand, its hunger older than his own. He struck out with the others—members of the House of Wrath—their attacks a storm of violence and purpose.
But it's fun.
The laugh that escaped him was sharp, bright, utterly without mercy. His fists found flesh, his blade found gaps, and somewhere beneath the rage, beneath the heat, beneath the cold certainty that had calcified in his chest years ago, there was something that might have been satisfaction.
This is what I was made for.
In the desert, years later, he would remember the oasis. He would remember the girl's throat beneath his hands. He would remember the voice that told him to finish it, and the friends who dragged him away.
He would not feel guilt. He would not feel regret. He would only feel the certainty that had been forming since the moment he first raised his fists: that the world was violence, and the only choice was whether you gave it or took it.
In the desert, he chose to give.