The Sand Graveyard did not forgive repetition.
It punished it.
The first time Adlet had crossed into this sea of dunes, the land had felt like a test meant to break his mind before anything else could reach his body. Now, it felt… familiar. Not gentler—never gentler—but recognizable in its cruelty. The sand still stole momentum. The heat still gnawed at his throat until every swallow hurt. The emptiness still pressed on his thoughts like a weight.
But he had returned anyway.
Not because he had to.
Because he wanted to.
He stood a long distance from Savar, far enough that the city's walls were nothing more than a memory behind him. Here, the dunes rose higher. The vegetation thinned to nothing. The world's boundary—an immense wall of rock that marked the edge of everything—ran along one side of the horizon like a silent judge.
Adlet adjusted the straps of his pack and exhaled, slow and controlled.
He could feel it under his skin even when he wasn't using it—the change in him since the Omni Cheetah's trial. Something restless. Something that wanted to move.
His Aura had grown again.
Not dramatically. Not loudly.
But undeniably.
Rank 4… intermediate.
The flow came faster. The shaping came easier. The cost felt… less punishing.
Progress you could feel without needing proof.
And yet—
He still couldn't control the Cheetah's power.
Not properly.
He stepped forward into the dunes and let his mind narrow until there was nothing left but breath and intent.
Yellow Aura.
The moment he called it, the sensation arrived like a sudden shift in gravity. His muscles didn't just feel reinforced—they felt primed. Coiled. Ready to explode. A tightness gathered along his legs and spine as if his body had become a spring pulled to its limit.
Adlet took one step.
Then tried to accelerate.
The response was immediate—violent.
He shot forward in a blur, sand erupting behind him, the force of the movement so abrupt it felt less like running and more like being thrown.
His eyes widened.
He tried to adjust his direction—
And the world spun.
The slightest shift of his weight triggered a second surge. His foot slid on loose sand. His body overcorrected. Momentum betrayed him.
Adlet stumbled, then crashed shoulder-first into the dune, rolling twice before he managed to stop himself. Sand filled his mouth. His pack thudded against his back.
He lay there for a moment, breathing hard, staring at the pale gold slope inches from his face.
"…Okay," he muttered into the sand.
He pushed himself up, spitting grit, brushing his cheek and jaw. The pain was mild—more insulting than harmful.
What bothered him wasn't the fall.
It was the feeling that came with it.
That instant where his body stopped being his.
He had called the Aura… and it had answered like a wild thing—too fast, too sharp, too eager. A single step had turned into a launch. A small correction had become a second burst. Not a mistake he could "fix" mid-motion—just momentum multiplying until the sand decided the outcome.
He clenched his jaw, forcing his breathing to slow.
Again.
He walked back to his starting point, boots sinking a little with every step, shoulders still gritty with sand. He adjusted his stance, grounded himself, and reached for the yellow Aura once more—more cautiously this time.
He tried again.
Yellow Aura.
A slow step. A faster step.
Then a burst.
He moved too hard.
He overshot.
He tried to stop and his legs didn't stop—they flung him into another surge, sideways this time, as if his body refused to accept stillness.
He caught himself, barely, with a half-turn that tore his feet through sand and left a long scar in the dune.
He stood there, chest rising and falling, brow furrowed.
This Aura didn't want to be contained.
It wanted to hunt.
It wanted to chase.
It wanted to turn every motion into a strike.
Adlet closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe.
One inhale.
One exhale.
He tried to remember the cheetah's movements.
Not the speed—that was obvious. Not the violence—that was inevitable.
The choices.
The way it changed direction without losing power. The way it used feints to force reactions. The way it could go from stillness to explosion and back to stillness like it was nothing.
Adlet opened his eyes.
"How did you do it…?" he whispered, as if the dunes could answer.
He tried again, smaller this time. He let the Aura gather—but restrained the urge to release it fully. He attempted a controlled burst, just a few meters, then a stop.
The stop became another burst.
He slipped.
He fell on one knee, catching himself with a hand. Yellow Aura still crawled under his skin like a restless animal.
The sand around him was marked with his failures—slanted tracks, broken lines, small impact craters where he'd hit the ground.
He was wasting time.
Worse—he was wasting a power he had nearly died for.
Adlet clenched his fist and forced himself to stand again.
He walked to the crest of a dune and looked out across the Sand Graveyard. The land was empty, but not quiet. You could feel the pressure in it. The constant suggestion that something could be watching from anywhere, even in open space.
His throat was dry. He took a sip from a waterskin, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Think.
Not with frustration.
With method.
This Aura was movement.
So he needed a movement method.
And then it clicked—not as a sudden revelation, but as a simple connection he couldn't believe he'd missed.
The explosiveness…
It reminded him of the Scarab.
The Scarab's bursts were brutal, forward, decisive—perfect for closing distance or escaping an immediate kill. The Scarab didn't care about elegance. It cared about impact.
And the sudden changes in direction…
That reminded him of the Bind Lizard.
The green Aura had taught him a different kind of speed. Not speed as velocity—speed as freedom. The ability to change your path without losing your balance, to move like your body was always one step ahead of your opponent's intention.
Adlet stared at the dunes.
The Omni Cheetah's Aura wasn't a new concept.
It was a fusion of two lessons he already understood.
So why was he trying to treat it like something entirely separate?
He exhaled.
He stepped down from the dune and returned to the flat area where he'd been training, then planted his feet in the sand.
No more random attempts.
He lifted his hands slightly, palms loose at his sides.
He didn't summon yellow Aura immediately.
Instead, he pictured the Scarab.
Its movement.
A straight burst.
A simple line.
Then he pictured the Bind Lizard.
Its footwork.
A curve.
A pivot.
A shift.
He let those images overlap in his mind.
A straight line that could break into a curve.
A burst that could be redirected.
Explosiveness with control.
Now—
Yellow Aura.
It flowed through him again, tight and eager.
Adlet didn't release it all at once.
He let it gather, like pressure behind a barrier.
Then he moved—
One burst forward.
Not maximum.
Just enough.
His body shot ahead.
This time, instead of trying to stop, he prepared for what came next.
Before the burst ended, he shifted his weight the way the green Aura had taught him—hips turning slightly, shoulders aligning, foot placement anticipating the direction change.
The moment the forward motion began to fade, he redirected it.
The next burst didn't throw him sideways.
It became a turn.
A controlled arc.
His feet dug into sand. His body leaned into the curve. The movement still felt violent—but it wasn't chaotic.
He didn't fall.
He didn't stumble.
He moved.
Adlet's eyes widened—not in surprise this time, but focus sharpening into something like hunger.
Again.
Forward burst.
Redirect.
Turn.
Stop by redirecting into stillness rather than trying to force a halt.
He repeated it, again and again, carving a pattern into the sand. The first dozen attempts were messy. He oversteered. He understeered. He lost his balance once and had to catch himself.
But each time, he understood a little more.
The Cheetah's Aura didn't want to be stopped.
It wanted to be guided.
Adlet began to sweat—not from exertion alone, but from the heat pressing in. The cloth around his neck felt heavier. His lungs tasted dry.
Still, he continued.
Burst.
Redirect.
Burst.
A sharp angle.
A wider angle.
A sudden stop achieved by cancelling momentum with a precise counter-shift.
The dunes blurred at the edges of his vision—not because of speed, but because he was finally beginning to move the way this power demanded.
Not like a human forcing himself to run.
Like a predator choosing where to strike.
At some point, he didn't even notice when his breathing became steadier.
Or when his feet stopped slipping.
Or when the fear of losing control faded into something else.
Confidence.
It was only when he paused—standing still for the first time in several minutes without needing to fight the Aura—that he realized his hands were shaking.
Not from exhaustion.
From adrenaline.
He laughed once—quiet, breathless—and let the sound die in the heat.
Then something shifted.
Not the wind. Not the sand.
Inside him.
A familiar presence drifted closer, brushing the edge of his awareness like a shadow crossing water.
"You're starting to listen to it."
Pami's voice didn't echo like it did in the clearing. It didn't pull him inward. It didn't demand silence or stillness.
It simply appeared—calm, steady—right there, in the middle of exertion.
Adlet froze for half a heartbeat.
His eyes widened slightly. Not in fear—just disbelief.
Pami… now?
He didn't answer out loud. He didn't even try.
He just exhaled, slow, as if acknowledging a fact he wasn't ready to name.
A faint smile returned to his face—smaller this time, sharper at the edges.
So the bond really is changing…
He wiped the sweat from his brow, tightened his grip, and stepped forward again.
Whatever this was… he would understand it later.
For now—
he trained.
Right now, the desert was giving him something rare.
A moment where he could train without interruption.
And Adlet had learned long ago not to waste those moments.
He trained until his legs burned.
Until the sand around him looked like it had been torn apart by a storm of footprints.
Until the yellow Aura began to feel less like an animal in his veins and more like an extension of his intent.
Only then did he allow himself to slow, breathing hard, scanning the dunes.
The mission he'd taken from Savar still waited.
Rank 4.
Impaling Buffalo.
Aggressive. Territorial.
Last seen deeper in the Graveyard.
He hadn't forgotten.
He'd just… delayed it.
Because if he was going to return to this place again and again—if he was going to survive what waited deeper—then this power had to become more than something he owned.
It had to become something he could use.
Adlet tightened the straps of his pack and started walking.
Not running.
Saving that for when it mattered.
The Sand Graveyard swallowed distance strangely. A dune that looked close could take hours to reach. A direction that felt straight could curve without you noticing.
Adlet kept the world's boundary on his left—far enough that he wasn't walking along the rock itself, but close enough that he wouldn't lose his bearings completely. The wall was a cruel guide, but it was still a guide.
He walked until the Stars' glow shifted, until the heat changed slightly, until the sand underfoot became finer and deeper.
He watched for signs.
Tracks.
He found the first proof in silence.
Not a trail. Not debris.
Bones.
Half-buried ribs protruded from a dune like the remains of a failed monument—white arcs peeking through sand that had tried, and failed, to erase them completely. A skull lay a few steps away, cracked cleanly, its empty sockets turned toward nothing.
Adlet didn't move for a moment.
The Sand Graveyard did this sometimes—left things on the surface, not as a warning, but as a fact. A reminder that even death could be sorted here, catalogued, then forgotten.
He stepped closer, careful.
The bones weren't old enough to be smooth. Their edges were still sharp in places, stripped too clean. No scavengers. No signs of a prolonged struggle.
It hadn't been a slow end.
Then he saw it.
Further down the slope, where the sand dipped into a shallow basin, a body lay twisted at an unnatural angle—fresh enough that the air around it still felt wrong.
A Protector.
Or at least someone equipped like one: layered cloth, hardened straps, a satchel torn open, its contents scattered and already starting to disappear beneath drifting sand.
And through the torso—
something had pinned him to the ground.
A massive horn, darker than bone, driven cleanly through flesh and armor alike and into the sand beneath, as if the desert itself had been used as an anvil.
Adlet's throat tightened.
He crouched slowly, eyes tracing the wound, the angle, the violence of it.
This wasn't a kill meant to feed.
It was a kill meant to stop.
To display.
To make a point.
Adlet exhaled once—controlled, but shallow.
So that's how it hunts…
No chase.
No warning.
Just impact.
Just a single decision made at full speed.
He rose, gaze lifting over the dunes.
The Sand Graveyard didn't offer trails.
It swallowed them.
Anything light enough to leave a clear mark was light enough to be erased a minute later. Wind, heat, shifting grains—everything here conspired to keep the surface clean, indifferent, blank.
But violence had its own language.
Adlet started walking, scanning not for footprints… but for absence. For places where the sand looked wrong—pressed flatter than it should be, as if something had rested there with too much weight. For shallow basins where the surface had been compacted into a dull sheen. For thin lines of disturbed grains running down dune faces, not like windfall, but like something had pushed through and forced the slope to settle behind it.
And above all—he looked for more bodies.
More horns.
More proof that the Apex didn't merely kill.
It pinned.
The desert tried to smooth over everything.
But an Impaling Buffalo didn't pass quietly.
Hours slipped by in a haze of heat and pale gold. The world gave him nothing but shifting horizons and the dry rasp of his own breath.
Then he saw it.
Not a track.
A shape.
At first it looked like a dune crest that didn't belong—too rounded, too deliberate, a low mass sitting against the monotony like a misplaced boulder in a sea of sand.
He blinked once.
The shape changed.
Not quickly.
Not stealthily.
Just… weight shifting.
And the dune around it trembled, grains cascading in lazy sheets as if the sand itself had been nudged aside.
Adlet stopped.
His skin prickled—not with fear, but recognition.
That wasn't the desert moving.
That was something the desert was forced to move around.
The Impaling Buffalo rose from behind the dune like a siege beast.
It was enormous—far larger than any buffalo should be, its body dense with muscle and packed mass, its hide thick and scarred. But what made it truly monstrous were the horns.
Not just one pair.
Multiple.
Spikes jutted forward from its skull, from its shoulders, even from the ridges along its back—like nature had decided it would be safer if the creature was a moving wall of impalement.
Its nostrils flared as it caught Adlet's scent.
And it lowered its head.
Adlet didn't wait for the charge to reach him.
He stepped forward and let yellow Aura ignite beneath his skin.
The buffalo charged.
The sand exploded under its weight. Its horns cut the air like spears.
Adlet moved.
Not away in a simple line.
He burst to the side, then redirected immediately, skimming around the beast's front with an arc that would have been impossible a week ago.
The buffalo's horns missed him by a breath.
It didn't stop.
It slammed forward, then tried to pivot.
But pivoting in sand with that much mass was slow—even for a Rank 4.
Adlet didn't waste the advantage.
He switched to black Aura, condensing a Scarab horn along his forearm, and struck at the buffalo's flank as he passed.
The hit landed with a heavy impact—enough to rattle his bones through the horn.
The buffalo's hide resisted.
Adlet clicked his tongue and leapt back, switching again—yellow Aura returning for movement.
The buffalo turned, snorting, eyes wild.
It charged again.
This time, Adlet didn't evade completely.
He burst backward, then sideways, letting the buffalo commit to its line. At the last moment, he redirected—slipping past the horns and staying close enough that the beast couldn't immediately realign.
It tried to swing its head.
Adlet used a short burst to hop back, then another to cut in, then another to escape the follow-up.
He felt it now—the rhythm between its attacks. The moment where it had to reset its footing.
The buffalo wasn't stupid.
It adapted.
After the third missed charge, it began to use feints—short, violent lunges meant to force Adlet to move, to reveal his direction.
It stamped the sand, then exploded forward half a step, horns scraping the air.
Adlet refused to waste movement.
He stayed still—
Then burst only when the real charge came, slipping around the side as horns tore through the space his ribs had occupied.
He switched to red Aura for an instant—manifesting a compact shell over his shoulder as the buffalo's side horn clipped him.
The impact cracked the shell but didn't break through.
Adlet's feet slid in sand, but he recovered with yellow Aura and sprang away before the buffalo could follow with its full weight.
So that was the fight.
Not a duel of speed.
A duel of timing.
A monster that could kill him with a single mistake, and a power that allowed him to avoid that mistake—if he stayed sharp.
Adlet breathed, sweat running down his temple.
He hadn't come here just to survive.
He'd come here to test.
So he pushed.
He used yellow Aura to bait charges, then redirected in tighter arcs, forcing the buffalo to turn more sharply than it wanted.
He used black Aura sparingly—only when he had a clean angle to strike without being caught by a counter-impalement.
He used red Aura only when there was no other choice.
And as the minutes stretched, the buffalo began to slow—not dramatically, but subtly.
Each charge dug deeper trenches.
Each pivot took a fraction longer.
Its breathing grew heavier.
Adlet's body was also tiring, but differently.
His Aura control was burning through reserves in small bites rather than one brutal cost. That was good. Sustainable.
But if he dragged this out too long, the heat would punish him anyway.
He needed a finish.
Adlet backed away, baiting another charge.
The buffalo lowered its head, horns angling forward.
It rushed.
Adlet burst sideways with yellow Aura—
Then, instead of redirecting away, he redirected in.
He cut toward the buffalo's head, slipping past the main horns at a dangerous distance.
The beast reacted instantly, trying to rake him with a shoulder spike.
Adlet switched to red Aura and threw a thin shell up at his ribs.
Impact.
The shell cracked, pain flashing through his side, but he stayed moving.
He switched back to yellow Aura and burst under the buffalo's neck line, close enough that the beast's own horns limited its ability to strike downward without hurting itself.
The buffalo tried to stomp.
Adlet sprang back.
It tried to twist, spikes scraping.
Adlet redirected again, staying close, circling.
He could see it now—an exposed section near the base of one of its forward horns, where old scars had cracked the hide. A weak point. Not obvious, but present.
One strike there could end it.
He stepped in—
The buffalo lunged.
Adlet didn't retreat.
He burst forward with yellow Aura, not to escape, but to close the final distance before the beast could adjust.
And in that motion—without planning it, without consciously deciding—
His right hand changed.
Yellow Aura gathered along his fingers.
Something sharp.
Something new.
A curve of light extended from his knuckles like a blade—like a claw made of condensed motion.
Adlet's eyes widened for a fraction of a second.
Then instinct finished what thought couldn't.
He swung.
The yellow claw cut across the weak point at the horn's base in a clean, tearing arc.
The buffalo's charge faltered.
A wet crack echoed through the dunes.
Blood sprayed hot against sand.
The creature bellowed—raw, furious—and stumbled, one of its massive horn structures partially severed, hanging wrong.
Adlet jumped back, heart hammering.
He stared at his own hand.
The yellow claw flickered… then vanished.
He hadn't trained that.
He hadn't even known he could do that.
And yet his body had produced it the moment he needed a strike that wasn't just movement.
Adlet swallowed, breath ragged.
"So that's part of it too…"
The buffalo shook its head violently, rage overriding pain.
It tried to charge again—
but the earlier impact had twisted something deeper.
Its breath hitched mid-stride, power bleeding out of the motion, and the front leg failed to bite into the sand.
Adlet didn't hesitate.
He switched to black Aura and formed the Scarab horn once more, striking the injured section with a brutal downward blow.
This time, the armor gave.
The buffalo collapsed onto one knee.
Adlet stepped in, switching back to yellow Aura—feeling that restless power surge again—and formed the claw once more, intentionally this time.
It was weaker.
Less stable.
But it existed.
He drove it into the buffalo's neck where the hide was thinnest.
The creature shuddered, then sagged.
The fight ended not with a single dramatic moment, but with weight slowly surrendering to stillness.
Adlet stood over the corpse, chest heaving, sweat dripping, blood drying on his ribs and forearm. He looked down at the beast and felt something settle inside him.
Not pride.
Not cruelty.
A quiet respect.
The buffalo had been exactly what it was—an Apex that survived by being impossible to approach.
And he had approached it anyway.
The corpse stayed where it was, heavy and real—yet motes still rose from it, like the last trace of what made it an Apex.
But Adlet didn't focus on them the way he would have before.
Because he could feel something else now.
The Omni Cheetah's Aura wasn't just speed.
It was attack.
A predatory style that could evolve into more than movement.
He watched the particles merge into him, warmth spreading through his limbs, feeding his Aura the way it always did.
Then he sat down in the sand.
He drank water.
He ate a strip of dried meat, chewing slowly.
The Sand Graveyard remained unforgiving, but for the first time since stepping into it, Adlet didn't feel like he was only surviving.
He was adapting.
He looked at his hands again, flexing his fingers.
That claw…
It had come out of instinct.
An instinct that was changing.
His fighting spirit wasn't just stubbornness anymore.
It was becoming something sharper.
A sense of what to do before he could explain it.
And that terrified him a little—not because it felt wrong, but because it felt natural.
Like the desert was teaching him faster than he could keep up with.
He rose and took a proof from the buffalo—one of the smaller shoulder spikes, broken off with effort and wrapped in cloth.
Then he began the walk back toward Savar.
The dunes didn't feel smaller.
The heat didn't feel lighter.
But his steps felt… steadier.
On the way, he tested the yellow Aura again. Small bursts. Controlled redirects. The claw once or twice—brief, unstable, but present.
Every attempt left him a little more exhausted, but it also left him a little more certain.
This power would become his.
And somewhere deep in his mind, Pami's presence stirred again—quiet satisfaction woven into his calm.
"You're not copying anymore," Pami said. "You're beginning to make it yours."
"It wouldn't work otherwise," Adlet said as he kept walking.
By the time Savar's distant shape began to appear—walls and movement faint against the dunes—Adlet's thoughts had already shifted forward.
He had a mission completed.
A new technique born.
A desert that still demanded more.
And a growing certainty that what he'd experienced so far—cheetah, buffalo, even Manticore—was only the beginning of what the Sand Graveyard could offer.
Soon, he would be stronger.
Soon, he would move without falling.
Soon, that claw would form as naturally as the Scarab horn.
The Sand Graveyard wasn't behind him.
It was still around him—waiting to be mastered.
Adlet tightened his grip on the wrapped proof at his side and continued toward Savar.
Already thinking beyond the next mission.
Already preparing for the next leap.
And somewhere in the dunes behind him, the Sand Graveyard remained silent—patient as ever—waiting to see what he would become.