The memory hit him with the force of a physical blow. Suddenly, he wasn't in the cold, damp sanctuary of the Order. He was thirteen again, hiding from the blistering midday sun in the deep, rusted shadow of a sandstone canyon.
Dagma was sitting beside him, her dark hair escaping its tight braids, her cheeks smudged with desert dust. They were supposed to be gathering dried scrub for the campfires, but they had spent the last hour just talking, sitting shoulder to shoulder. Then, Kaséti arrived.
He strode in with a captured prey held high, a tiny fury creature. Playing the part of the ultimate survivor, he was grinning, his chest puffed out, radiating the arrogant pride of the tribe's alpha. "I managed to catch it near the rocks," Kaséti boasted, lifting the small animal as it let out a weak, trembling squeak. "It's still alive."
Dagma rushed over, her eyes wide with admiration. "You are so fast, Kaséti! No one else in the village could catch one of these without a trap."
Kaséti's grin deepened, emboldened by her praise. "Next time, I'll bring you something bigger, Dagma. Whatever you want."
He took a step closer, closing the distance between them. From where he sat in the shadows, Ámenor watched, his stomach twisting into a tight, burning knot of jealousy. He dug his fingers into the sand, unable to look away, furious that he hadn't been the one to bring her the stupid catch.
Kaséti's gaze dropped to Dagma's lips. She didn't pull back. She just held her breath. Ámenor was lost in a quiet, crushing sorrow.
"Whoa, Kaséti! What did you get?!" The moment shattered. A tiny whirlwind of sand and frantic energy crashed between them. It was Ámmon, Dagma's little brother, completely oblivious to the intimate moment he had just ruined.
"It's a rat with long ears," Kaséti snapped, his voice thick with irritation as he glared down at the boy. "And it's our dinner." He reached for the bone-handled knife at his belt, shifting his grip on the jerboa's scruff to quickly snap its neck. The small creature let out a panicked squeak.
Looking at Ámmon, Ámenor instantly realized that the situation was utterly terrifying for the little boy. It was as if Ámmon were actually feeling the tiny animal's panic himself. "Don't do it, Kaséti," Ámenor called out, his voice echoing sharply off the canyon walls. "Let it go."
But the truth was, Ámenor pitied the creature just as much as Ámmon did, and he simply didn't want to see it die. "He won't even make a good dinner."
Kaséti stopped, shooting Ámenor a dark, mocking look. "Are you too soft for the desert, Ámenor? It's meat. Or are you just mad because I caught it while you sat around doing nothing?"
"Leave him alone, Kaséti," Dagma interrupted, her voice firm and uncompromising.
"Please, Kaséti!" Ámmon begged, clearly distressed, almost as if he were fearing for his own life. His large eyes welled up as he reached out with small, trembling hands. "He's too little! Don't hurt him!"
Kaséti's jaw tightened. He looked from Ámenor's defiant glare to Dagma's stubborn, protective stance, and finally down at the pleading boy. He realized he was outnumbered. With a frustrated, heavy sigh, Kaséti dropped his hand from his knife.
"Fine. Take your useless rat and make it king," Kaséti spat, clearly fed up. "I don't care."
He roughly tossed the trembling creature into Ámmon's waiting arms. Ámmon caught it gently, clutching it fiercely to his chest. He looked relieved; his panicked expression vanished instantly, replaced by a massive, triumphant grin. "I'm keeping him," the little boy declared, looking defiantly up at the older hunter. "And his name is Khepri."
The golden warmth of the canyon evaporated in a heartbeat. Ámenor blinked, the ghostly echoes of his childhood fading, leaving him shivering in the freezing night air of the oasis, back at the Order's stronghold. The name slipped out again, as if he wasn't sure she was real. "Dagma, is it really you?"
She took a step forward. Her hair was tied back differently now. Her clothes were no longer the woven garbs of the tribe; they were simpler, styled like the people of the oasis.
"You shouldn't be walking," she said, but there was no harshness in her tone. It was caught somewhere between profound relief and utter disbelief.
Ámenor stood rooted to the spot. "You stayed in the village…" he murmured.
"After the men left for the raid." Her gaze shifted. Not with pain, but with the heavy, unspoken weight of a shared memory. "We were left unprotected. Only the women and children remained at the camp."
He frowned. The cold wind whistled through the rocks between them. "What happened?" Ámenor asked, still struggling to understand the connection.
She hesitated. And that tiny beat of silence brought the tension rushing back. Because now he noticed something he had missed before: she didn't seem surprised to see him. She looked as if she had been… waiting.
"After you all left," she began, "others came."
His heart raced. "Did the Grasslanders follow our trail back to the camp?"
"No," she shook her head. "Not like the ones from the battle. Not soldiers, I think. These men didn't come with drawn weapons. They came searching."
"Searching for what?"
She scanned the shadows before continuing. "They asked about children born under specific signs. They asked about bloodlines. They asked for your father's name."
The words dropped between them like a stone. He took a step back. "What are you saying?"
"That there were things the elders knew." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Things about this place. About the desert. About ancient pacts."
Her words hung in the air. The wind gusted harder. The oasis water rippled in the background.
"But before they could find what they were looking for... the Arcanum Order got to us first."
Ámenor looked around at the hidden buildings, the ritualistic silence, the carefully tended torches. A distant, low chime echoed through the camp, a bell, barely audible. Dagma turned her head toward the center of the oasis.
"You shouldn't be out here," she warned again, her tone much sharper now. She locked eyes with him. And for a split second, he saw fear. Not for him. For something vastly larger.
"These people are crazy. Some here believe you are some kind of an answer," she paused once more. "And others believe you are the threat," she finally said, her tone heavy.
Further away, up among the rocky ridges guarding the oasis, a small shadow shifted. Someone is watching us, Ámenor thought, his hand instinctively twitching toward the empty space at his belt where a blade should be. The moonlight caught nothing but jagged stone, yet the prickle at the back of his neck told a different story. Not a member of the Order. Not someone from the village. But someone who was listening.
The shadow in the rocks melted away, swallowed by the dark. But for Ámenor, the feeling of being watched remained. He was still staring at the ridgeline when Dagma grabbed his wrist. Her grip was firm, calloused and warm.
"Come with me. Before someone comes looking for you." she breathed, pulling him into the cover of the date palms.
He didn't pull away. He had too many questions, but his body was too battered to argue. She led him down a narrower trail, skirting the edge of the oasis rather than cutting through it. The damp earth silenced their footsteps, and the water mirrored their passing as distorted, elongated shapes.
She stopped abruptly beneath the heavy shade of a woven canopy and spun to face him. Her eyes weren't the ones he remembered. This wasn't the girl who used to sit by her mother, sewing in the fading afternoon light. Or the one who scolded him for tracking sand into the tent. Or the girl who always found an excuse to ignore gathering the dried scrub for the campfires when she was supposed to. Something inside her had woken up. Something razor-sharp.
"You almost died, Ámenor." Her voice dropped to a fierce whisper, thick with unshed tears.
"How did they find me?" Ámenor asked, leaning heavily against a wooden post just to stay upright.
"They say the sand guided a Voyager to you," Dagma replied, shaking her head slowly. "But that's only half the truth." She paused, recalling the events. "Strange men came to our camp bringing the news of the slaughter and asking questions," she continued. "Right after that, the Order arrived and advised the elders who had stayed behind in our village to get deeper into the dunes. They finally decided it was no longer safe there and ordered everyone to pack up and flee to the outskirts of the city of Fahal."
She took a shaky breath, her jaw tightening. "I refused to run. A few of us decided to search the battlefield for survivors instead. I followed the Order's Voyagers who were already heading in that direction. That is how we found you. Lying half-dead in the middle of the Flats, bleeding out and almost gone."
Ámenor stared at her, a knot forming in his throat. "You were there? You were there from the beginning?" he demanded, a trace of hurt leaking into his raspy voice. "Why didn't you speak to me? Why didn't you let me know I wasn't alone?"
"I recognized you right away," Dagma said softly, reaching out to briefly touch his bandaged shoulder. "And when they came to ask me who you were... they recognized your father the moment I spoke his name." She looked away, the sharp edge in her eyes returning. "After that... they forbade me from coming anywhere near you. They locked you away in that tent, treating you not as a survivor, but as some kind of sacred relic they had unearthed."
She crossed her arms, holding herself tightly against the night chill. "I couldn't just leave you to them. I decided to follow the so called Voyager to see exactly where they were taking you," she explained, her voice steadying for a brief moment. "The rest of our camp members who came with me continued toward the savanna to search for other survivors, but I stayed with you."
Then, the heavy silence of the oasis seemed to press down on them. She stepped closer, the moonlight revealing the raw exhaustion etched into her features. Her tough exterior finally fractured, crumbling like dry clay. "What happened in the battle, Ámenor?" she asked, her voice trembling with a sudden, overwhelming fear. She grabbed his arm, her grip desperate. "What happened to my little brother? Did he die too?"
Her voice cracked. Heavy, sorrowful tears spilled from the corners of her dark eyes.
Ámenor's chest tightened as the bloody memories rushed back.
"Ámmon rode out with the scout captain minutes before we encountered the enemy. Kaséti and I stayed back to prepare the camp while they scouted the area before dark," Ámenor answered softly, hating the uncertainty in his own voice. "But no one knows where they went. They just disappeared."
Dagma closed her eyes, a shuddering breath escaping her lips. "And Kaséti?"
Ámenor swallowed hard, unable to look away from her tears. "He's dead, Dagma." His chest didn't ache purely from his wounds. "He saved my life. He held off the Grasslanders while I fled like a coward."
He held her gaze. She took a trembling breath, tears pooling in her eyes. She wanted to say something, but no sound came from her mouth. Finally, as if deciding it was better to leave the rest unspoken, she turned and kept walking. The path began a slight incline, winding through tighter rock formations until it felt like a natural stone corridor. The vegetation thinned out, replaced by dark bedrock that seemed to swallow the moonlight.
"Where are we going?" he asked as the air shifted. He felt it before he saw it. A faint prickling across his skin. As if the sand beneath his boots was humming. The corridor opened into a small, perfectly circular clearing, hidden far deeper than the main oasis.
The air here was noticeably colder, carrying a metallic tang, like the sky just before a lightning strike. There were no buildings, no signs of mundane life. Only towering monoliths of dark, weather-beaten stone arranged in a perfect ring, acting as silent guardians. Each pillar was deeply etched with ancient, hand-carved runes that seemed to drink the moonlight. The center of the clearing wasn't sand. It was a single, massive slab of smooth, pale rock, polished by centuries of wind and reverence. And running through the very middle of it was a hairline fissure, almost invisible to the naked eye, yet radiating an immense, sleeping pressure.
Dagma stopped at the edge of the circle.
"They call this the Cradle."
"The Fonte?" he asked, barely above a whisper.
She nodded.
"It's not the Fonte itself. It's… like a breath of it. A point where it brushes against the surface."
He felt it. He didn't see a blinding light. He didn't witness a surge of realization. But he felt it. The same pull from before, undeniably stronger now. It wasn't external. It was as if something buried deep inside him was rising up to answer it. The air grew dense. His heart raced.
And then, the fissure in the stone glowed. Not like fire. Like water reflecting a light that didn't exist.
Ámenor took an involuntary step forward.
Dagma seized his arm.
"Slowly." There was no fear in her voice. Only pure reverence.
"They believe it awakens when it recognizes power."
"And you?" he asked, unable to tear his eyes from the glowing crack.
She was quiet for a long moment. "They believe it reacts better to some bloodlines." He finally looked at her. "They thought it would react to me," she added softly, "because of my mother."
"Then why is it reacting to me?"
Dagma didn't answer. But he saw it. She felt it too. The stone circle began to emit a sound, a low, nearly imperceptible hum, like wind trapped in a cavernous deep. The pale light within the fissure pulsed, as if the desert itself were drawing a breath. Then, the hum was shattered.
Footsteps echoed from the dark corridor behind them. Deliberate. Unhurried.
Several pairs.
The echo of the footsteps did not break the pulse of the Cradle; it twisted it into something dangerous. The sounds echoing from the dark corridor were slow, rhythmic, and entirely too calm. Whoever was approaching wasn't lost, and they certainly weren't in a hurry. They moved with the quiet, chilling certainty of hunters who had found their prey exactly where they expected it to be.
Ámenor's breath caught in his throat. Instinct kicked in before rational thought. Ignoring the sharp ache in his battered ribs, he shifted his weight, stepping half-in-front of Dagma to shield her. His right hand instinctively twitched toward his empty belt, desperate for the comforting grip of a hilt that was no longer there.
I will not run like a coward again, Ámenor thought. Gathering every ounce of focus he had, he braced himself for the imminent battle.
First came the hollow thud of wood striking stone. Then, pale fabric caught the cold edge of the moonlight. Five figures stepped out of the gloom and into the circular clearing. Ámenor's muscles coiled tight, ready to fight for his and Dagma's life. But these weren't soldiers with drawn blades. They wore the stitched symbols of the Order over their hearts. They were wardens.
Standing in the center, leaning heavily on a dark wooden staff, was the old man from the healing tent. His eyes were wide, reflecting a blinding light, entirely caught off guard by the scene before him. The sand around Ámenor and Dagma was levitating. The grains floated in a perfect spiral, defying gravity, swirling in tight, violent circles like miniature hurricanes. The fissure in the Cradle was no longer just glowing, it was erupting with an intense, piercing white light.
Ámenor glanced at Dagma. She looked just as terrified and awestruck as the wardens. But the moment Ámenor consciously tried to grasp what was happening, the blinding light from the crack was extinguished in a heartbeat. The swirling sand fell lifelessly back to the stone floor, dusting their leather sandals. Instantly, the clearing was plunged back into gloom, illuminated only by the weak, flickering light of the surrounding candles, casting ghostly shadows against the monoliths.
The old man slowly lowered his staff. The initial shock melted from his wrinkled face, replaced by a confirmation. "I told you," the elder whispered, his voice thick with awe and dread, "he would feel the pull before dawn."
Another elder raised a hand. "Gather the Circle."