(2 miles from Dust City, 1 hour before Rin's Fight)
Sand already tasted iron.
Four thousand Red Cloaks shoved the Dust City outpost road—shields up, red cloth black with grit—smashing two thousand Great Sand Raiders toward the stone palisade. Scimitars rang off claymores. Hook knives slid under ribs and came out bright. Men howled, gagged, slipped in blood, got stepped on, clawed up, and were cut down again.
"Drive!"
"Spears—low!"
Arrows skipped and bit. Rough Wind tricks slapped some aside; the rest stayed where they landed. A boy stared at the shaft in his gut until someone hooked his collar and ripped him behind a shield a heartbeat before the next volley would've stapled him to the ground.
Cyrus walked the center like a guillotine that learned to breathe.
Black hair with a silver streak. Pale-steel eyes whitened at the edges when his aura pressed. Heart Chaser purred to his pulse—and then it wasn't a battlefield, it was a butcher's lane.
MARTIAL MUTI — NINEFOLD PULSE OF EXTINCTION!
Ripples cracked from his hips. A front rank's knees folded; the line opened like wet paper and he stepped in.
STEP-CUT — HORIZON BREAK!
A waist-high line sheared the world. Three torsos slid off hips and flopped, guts slapping sand. A spear kissed his sleeve; he turned the haft and sent the head back through its owner's open mouth. A hammer clipped his shoulder; he fed force down the handle—forearm burst where bone met elbow; the man shrieked through white chips and blood.
Three Raiders tried him from blind angles. He dipped under a sabre and smashed an elbow into a throat so hard the cartilage crumpled like tin. His heel folded a shin backward with a wet crack. Heart Chaser slipped up into an armpit; the arm fell away still clutching steel.
"Press two! Spears—drive!"
Six points lunged; four came back red; two snapped. He snatched a broken shaft, spun, and stapled three skulls to the palisade—thwack, thwack, thwack—then slung the splinter through a fourth eye without looking. Hot spray fanned a shield and steamed.
A captain ground sabre on Heart Chaser. Cyrus let him push, slid off-line, drew once. The belly opened like a slit wineskin and steamed.
RISING TIGER — THROAT LADDER!
Four ascending cuts. Cheeks peeled. Nose parted. The crown lifted and the brain smoked in air. The body stayed kneeling, trying to understand.
Fifteen dogpiled him.
VOID MUTI — SILENCE FIELD!
Sound went soft, like felt over the world. A Raider's flame charm coughed once and died; edge-glow on blades dulled to charcoal. Boots lost purchase like the ground decided to be a thought instead of a place. Cyrus reaped calf, hamstring, and spine. One head stayed on by skin; its owner took two steps out of habit and toppled, arterial fans painting the sand.
On the flank, a woman in ash-white veils watched with a face like a card. Faye didn't move. Blood crept toward her boot and froze before it touched.
"Fifteen paces—take the—"
"What is that?"
A speck rode the high blue. Too fast to be a bird. Too true to be a stone.
"Fire?"
"No engine—"
"Is that—"
The sound came late, a long, bone-deep moan like a mountain deciding to move.
"Under shields!"
Cyrus looked up once.
The sky slammed into the desert.
Sand geysered. Shock pancaked men on both sides; shields pinwheeled; teeth clicked bloody. Noon fouled to dust. Heat got stolen out of lungs; breath smoked white.
The haze peeled away.
A man stood in the crater with his arms folded.
Battered Tsar frostguard plates scored by claw scars. Broad frame made for grappling. Pale eyes that tracked motion like prey. He didn't roar. He didn't pose. He stood, and the desert remembered winter.
A Raider saw him first and screamed. "The Black Howl!"
"Pillar!" rippled through the Raiders, The Great Sand Raiders surged, hope lighting like oil.
He barely moved—and all his ice fought for the Raiders.
CRYO — PERMAFROST!
Cold raced knee-high through the Red Cloaks in a widening ring. Kneecaps popped; boots locked to ground; arms froze mid-swing. A whole cohort went still in the act of shouting, breath hung white between their teeth like glass.
CRYO — ICE SPIKES!
Spikes ripped up and launched—clear lances hissing off the frozen ground in sprays. The first row punched straight through red shields and torsos and pinned men to their own comrades; a second wave split midair into smaller fangs and stitched a dozen more to the palisade; a third volley scythed low, chewing ankles into red snow. Limbs tore; bodies thrashed and then didn't.
CRYO — ICE WALL!
A slab erupted tall as a house and drove forward like a battering ram. It hammered a red knot flat—bone and iron crunched together—and then turned ninety degrees on its own, becoming a moving bulwark for a Raider push. Raiders flowed along its lee side, sabers flashing, cutting the stunned survivors down. Another wall spun, clapped two clusters of Reds together, and kept squeezing until skulls cracked like ripe fruit.
Everything around Tikhan turned lethal. The ground at his feet glazed to slick blue; every step he took crawled in frost that spread outward, a visible radius of death. Reds who got too close discovered their fingers wouldn't open to let go of their weapons; when their friends tried to pull them free, skin peeled from palms and stuck to the ice. A bugler exhaled a note; it froze in his mouth; when he clawed at his lips they split and the horn clinked to the ground like glass.
He still hadn't taken a full step.
Raiders roared and rammed sabers into stunned throats along the lanes his walls opened and guarded, leaping over Permafrost statues to carve collarbones and rip hamstrings while the spikes kept firing—one last fan of needles slicing through faces and eyes until the sand ran slick.
Cyrus carved back through the wreckage with meat and geometry, clearing a corridor with wrists, throats, and spine. Heart Chaser purred louder. His aura went black-blue with silver edges; light bent toward him like it owed a debt.
He stopped twenty paces from the crater. "RYŌIKI: PALE DESERT."
The world peeled.
Black sky fell. Dunes bleached white. A cracked pale-blue moon hung too close. Pressure closed like a lid; Raiders, Red Cloaks, palisade, screams—everything slid out from under it like grit under a seal until only three stood in the hush.
Cyrus. Tikhan. Faye.
No wind. No footprints. Even breath tried to forget itself.
Tikhan's glance was the whole of his posture. "A moon at noon. Sands that keep no tracks." A small, professional nod. "Beautiful, but you're gonna need a little more to handle me". He didn't lift a hand. "RYŌIKI: WINTER NEVERLAND."
Winter shouldered in without a gesture—death-cold tundra, wolves inside the gale, a distant ice kingdom glowing from within. The arena split down the center: Pale Desert to the right, Winter Neverland to the left. Where they met, the seam hissed: snow sublimated to salt; sand flashed to glass.