The Crimson Wastes began where the empire's maps ended.
Red sand. Knife-sharp wind. Bones of beasts too big to name bleaching under a sun that still refused to rise white.
For three days Kai walked without sleep.
Without food.
Without water—except what he licked from the blood crusted on his sleeves when thirst clawed too hard.
Calamity didn't need rest.
It fed on movement.
On memory.
On the slow erosion of everything soft inside him.
By the end of the second day, he couldn't remember the sound of Rin's voice when she'd called him big brother.
The wooden sword at his belt felt heavier for it.
The Hunters Arrive
On the dawn of the fourth day since the eclipse—
SFX: SHRAAA—WUMPF (auras slamming down like falling pillars)
—they found him.
Three riders on iron-scale lizards.
Black cloaks snapping in the wind. Gold wolf of the provincial garrison embroidered on their chests.
Core Formation auras bright enough to punch holes in the gloom.
They fanned out with military precision, sabers drawn, chains of light connecting them.
The captain—mid-thirties, scar splitting her lower lip—rose in her stirrups.
"Eclipse Demon! By order of Lord Governor Wei, surrender the cursed artifact and accept judgment!"
Kai stopped walking.
SFX: crk-crk-crk…
Red dust curled around his ankles like something alive.
He turned.
The captain's eyes flicked to the white streak in his hair.
To the wooden sword.
To Calamity—a hole in the world—resting lazily at his hip.
Her voice faltered, only for a heartbeat.
"Last chance, boy. Drop the weapon."
Calamity purred.
SFX: vrmmmmm… (low, hungry resonance)
Kai tilted his head.
"Do you know what your governor paid for Lot 24?"
The captain blinked. "…What?"
"Three hundred mid-grade stones," Kai said softly. "Discounted for attitude."
The riders shifted. Uneasy.
They expected a feral monster.
Not a quiet ghost quoting prices.
Kai stepped forward.
SFX: hsssss—CRACK
The sand beneath his foot turned black and glassy.
"I'll ask once," he said. "Turn around. Live. Keep riding for the empire, and I'll find you later."
The left rider spat. "Arrogant brat. You're only Qi Condensa—"
Kai vanished.
Not moved.
Vanished.
SFX: SHHHK—flp
The rider's head simply wasn't attached anymore.
The body stayed upright for three full seconds, lizard still walking, before collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.
The remaining two shouted formation commands.
Too late.
SFX: KRRRSHHH—SKREEEE
Calamity drank the captain's saber, her qi, the memory of her daughter's fifth birthday that flashed across her eyes in her final instant.
The last rider fled.
Kai let him get fifty paces.
Then flicked a single strand of shadow.
SFX: pffft—BOOM
The lizard exploded into red mist.
The rider flew twenty meters, hit the ground as a folded ruin.
Kai walked over.
The man was still alive, legs crushed, choking blood.
"Please… I have a family—"
"So did they," Kai said.
He crouched. Pressed two fingers to the man's forehead.
SFX: shlrrrp… (Calamity rooting into memory)
Every secret the garrison knew poured into Kai's skull.
Names.
Dates.
Routes.
A hidden auction.
Nine days from now.
Red Sand Oasis.
Twenty more children in transit.
When Calamity withdrew, the rider was an empty shell.
Kai stood.
The dying eclipse sun pulsed once on the horizon.
SFX: thmp…
His robes were rotting away—Calamity's aura eating the fabric.
His skin paler. Veins dark as ink.
Somewhere between the first kill and the third,
he'd slipped into Hollow Stage 1.
Stronger.
Faster.
Emptier.
The memory of the captain's daughter's birthday was already fading, replaced by cold satisfaction.
He hated how good it felt.
Calamity whispered:
More. We need more if we are to reach the auction in time.
Kai opened his eyes.
The gray irises were bleeding crimson at the edges.
"I know," he said.
He began walking again—faster, a blur against the dunes.
Behind him, three iron-scale lizards stood obediently, waiting for masters who would never return.
He didn't take them.
Mounts slowed you down when the thing riding your soul was impatient.
The Ghost Caravan
By dusk, the Boneyard Canyons loomed—stone spires rising like broken teeth.
Wind howled through them.
SFX: wooooo—WHISTLE—wooooo
Almost human.
At the canyon mouth waited a caravan.
Ten wagons circled like a fortress.
Ghost-white lanterns hung from poles, swaying.
A closed eye inside a circle marked every canvas.
The Ghost Caravan—
smugglers of things the empire denied existed.
Eclipse-touched children were their favorite cargo.
Kai stepped into lantern light.
A figure emerged.
Tall. Gray cloak.
Porcelain mask painted with a child's smiling face.
The mask spoke with a woman's voice, soft and amused.
"Well, well. The little eclipse demon comes gift-wrapped. The bounty on your head could buy a kingdom."
Kai touched the wooden sword at his belt.
"I'm not here for your bounty," he said. "I'm here for yours."
The masked woman tilted her head.
"Bold. But you're just one broken boy, and we are thirty. Even monsters bleed."
Kai smiled.
A terrible, wrong smile.
"Let's test that."
He drew Calamity.
SFX: SHWOOOOM—black-out pulse
All lanterns died.
Darkness swallowed the camp.
Men shouted. Wagons crashed.
Something tore through canvas.
Someone screamed a note that cut off halfway.
When light returned—
Wagons burned.
Sand blackened.
Blood everywhere.
Kai stood in the center, holding a new ledger.
The masked woman was nailed to her own wagon by her shadow, still alive, mask cracked to reveal one terrified eye.
Kai leaned close.
"Nine days until Red Sand Oasis," he whispered. "You're going to take me inside. Then you're going to watch me burn it down."
The woman whimpered.
Calamity purred—
SFX: purr-r-r-r-r (like a cat made of knives)
The eclipse sun finally slipped beneath the horizon.
Night fell true for the first time in a thousand years.
And somewhere in the dark, a boy with crimson consuming his eyes began running toward the next massacre.