They moved before dawn, like ghosts exhaling across a cold countryside. Soufiane led, low and quiet, a strip of shadow among shadows. The dozen freed prisoners they had once rescued were now part of their ragged procession—scarred, hungry, but walking. Meriem kept Rachid's arm looped through hers; Abderrazak covered the rear with the crowbar slung over his shoulder like a threat. Amal, fever long broken, walked steady; the antibiotics had bought her breath back and now she breathed slow and precise, waiting for the storm.
The sawmill lay in the shallow valley beyond the ridge: a tangle of corrugated roofs and blackened beams, a skeleton of industry repurposed into a fortress. Ayoub's banners weren't banners so much as warnings—clumps of cloth and rusted metal. From the trees above, Soufiane could see the firelight scatter across men's faces, hear the low rhythm of men moving. Ayoub's domain smelled of smoke and oil and old cruelty.
"It's crowded," Abderrazak whispered. "More than we thought."
Soufiane narrowed his eyes. He had not expected this to look like anything but ruin. Ayoub had grown arms. Men had come to him for protection or plunder—same thing—and he had built a machine fed by fear. That machine would not fall with a single knife.
They went through the plan once, just once, the hushed motions of people who had seen death and kept the habit of thinking anyway. Meriem and Amal would make the noise at the south perimeter—drop a cache, throw a flare—force the rotation. Soufiane and Abderrazak would hit north posts, slide in where the wire had rotted. Once the guard lines were scrambled, Soufiane would go to the cages: Mourad first, then the others. Two hunting rifles—what they had stolen—might buy them an exit. The new prisoners might be too weak to run, but the will to move at the sight of a blade can be a powerful thing.
They flowed down the ridge like water finding a crease in rock. The first blow was surgical: Abderrazak closed on a lonely sentry, a shoulder and a crowbar—no sound but a dull thud. Soufiane, blade calm in his hand, slit throats with the practiced economy of someone who had once fished but now cut ties that were far bloodier. For a breath it felt like error-free rhythm—danger made simple.
Then the camp broke.
A thrown lantern caught dry brush and the sawmill, fed angrily on old timbers. Carries of men shouted. The noise that Meriem made—sharp, true, the sound of someone calling out a name that cannot be ignored—tore the night open. Soldiers lanterned torches and the valley exploded into motion: figures running, rifles raised, dogs barking somewhere in the dark. Ayoub's voice rolled across them, a single dark tide: "Hunt them!"
Soufiane's pulse thrummed. They hit the cages—wire tearing like paper under the pressure of too many desperate hands. A man called Soufiane's name in a cracked whisper that he thought he would never hear again: Mourad, blinking and alive. For an instant the world narrowed to the bolt dropping, the hand that shoved free the lock, the small human music of someone stumbling into air after being starved of it.
Then the rifles spoke.
It was not a clean fight. Men poured into the clearing from every hide, and bullets stitched the air like angry rain. Abderrazak, a broad shadow with a crowbar, took two shots in the shoulder but refused to go down. Soufiane ducked behind a fallen beam and saw a shape—Ayoub—step onto higher ground, huge in the firelight, a rifle in one hand and a grin that did not know mercy.
"You thought you could take what's mine?" Ayoub called out, voice cutting through the baying. He raised his arm and nodded; more men poured from the tents like a wave.
Soufiane moved to pull Mourad, then a flare turned the wrong way and caught a heap of fuel. The sawmill erupted in an orange throat. Heat and sound blurred the world. Men were burning and screaming, men were falling, and in the push Soufiane was shoved, his knuckles scraping bone against splintered timber.
Something heavy hammered the back of his head. The world went bright, then black around the edges. He tasted copper—blood or smoke—and for a second his world narrowed to the rhythm of his own breath.
When he blinked back to the field, the shape of Ayoub was there like a god of iron, his men converging. Soufiane saw Mourad dragged down by a boot, a rifle trained, the finger tightening.
"No," Soufiane thought, and launched. He ran for the cage in a raw two-step sprint—half instinct, half promise—and reached into the crush.
A blast sounded at the far side of the mill; something screamed and the roof heaved in a cascade of fire. A beam collapsed—felling men like dominoes. Soufiane lunged. He felt a hand close on his ankle and another tug at the sleeve; he swung his blade and something wet and warm spattered his palm.
Up on the ridge the forest exhaled as if it could not hold its breath anymore. Ayoub's laugh rumpled like a storm.
Soufiane found Mourad's eyes for the briefest of seconds: recognition, terror, a plea. He grabbed him, shoulder to shoulder, and tried to drag them both toward the trees.
Then—an explosion, close enough to melt a man's hearing. Heat pushed them to the earth. The sawmill's central beam cracked and began to fall with a sound like the end of the world.
Soufiane's fingers locked on Mourad's arm. The world tilted. The last thing he heard before the beams fell over him—Ayoub's voice, close and certain: "Run, Soufiane. Run and tell those you love how I watched your friends die."
Darkness closed with the thunder of collapsing wood.