The fire still flickered behind Altai's eyes, even now.
Days had passed. Maybe more. Time moved differently after a strike. You stopped counting when survival took over.
He sat atop a ridge beneath the crescent moon, a scrap of ash-stained cloak draped over his shoulder, and let the memory return—not as a dream, but as it truly happened.
It began with a glitch in the wind.
One moment, the plains sang with soft night sounds—crickets, the slow hum of Sky-Tents shifting with the cool air. The next, static. The air grew thick, then wrong. Birds fled. The Shagai steeds stamped anxiously in their pens. Saruul had noticed first.
"Why are the echo blades humming?"
Their blades—still sheathed—were vibrating, syncing with heartbeat and instinct. A warning older than language.
Then came the silence. A silence too deep. No tech should've pierced their camouflage netting—not the woven solar mesh, not the bone-frequency disruptors. But something had. They'd hacked the sky.
And then—the first light.
A streak of plasma, slicing down from the black. Then another. Then dozens. The strike was clinical. Precise. Designed to incinerate before questions were asked.
Altai remembered grabbing his Khunn Bow, still half-dressed, and diving outside with Saruul. She was faster—already whistling commands to her Shagai steed, yelling orders to younger scouts. Flames licked the edge of the tents. Screams were already rising.
"To the canyon path!" one of the elders shouted.
"Protect the children!"
"Where is the Champion?!"
Their father—the wolf-helmed blade master of their tribe—was already in the center square, echo blade in hand, facing the incoming death.
Altai barely remembered his own kills. Only fragments came back: a Zhongyan soldier—half-machine, chrome jaw split with aggression—raising an arm to scan, and Altai's arrow splitting the circuitry before the signal reached their brain.
Saruul had drawn blood too. She fired three shots, took down a drone, and leapt onto her steed like she'd trained for this moment since birth. But then—explosion. Dirt. Blood. Her steed reared and she flew.
Altai didn't even think. He turned back, grabbed her limp arm, and dragged her across the scrubland as more blasts rained down.
"Don't stop," he had whispered. "Don't stop now."
Their tribe had a system. Ancient, but adaptable. Smoke shrouds disguised their retreat. Magnetic pulses jammed low-range scans. Elders carried the map-memories in bone-carved stones. They didn't rely on cloud servers or tracked networks.
They moved with the wind—always.
By dawn, they'd vanished into the gorge. Nearly half had made it. The rest… no one knew. Some tents didn't burn. Some bodies were unrecovered.
And their father?
He arrived after the retreat.
At first, Altai thought he hadn't made it. But as the wounded were counted, the Champion arrived—walking without his helmet, shirt torn, blood streaking down one arm. He said nothing. His blade was cracked.
Only the old seer noticed his limp.
Back on the ridge, Altai looked down toward the temporary camp. Saruul slept beneath a solar blanket, bandaged but breathing. Their father sat by the fire with the other warriors, silent, sharpening a replacement blade.
Altai clenched his fists.
The Zhongyan didn't kill them all. But they'd tried. And next time, it would be worse.
The time for hiding might be ending.