The Glass Pass looked wrong.
Cael Vernos noticed it before Rovan had said anything, which annoyed him more than it probably should have. He preferred certainty over instinct. Still, though the feeling was still there, quiet and persistent, like an eyelash that was stuck.
Trade routes were rarely empty. Even when caravans avoided them, there were signs. Tracks half buried by the wind. Broken marker poles, scavenging birds circling something dead and unimportant. The pass had none of that.
It was just sand, silence.
Cael adjusted the strap of his pack and looked ahead again. The sun was high, bleaching color from the dunes, turning the world flat and sharp. His grey eyes narrowed slightly as his perception layer activated, the surge of axiom flowing to his eyes, looking for any signs of activity.
"Routes don't die overnight," Cael said.
Rovan walked a few paces ahead, anchor resting across his back like a counterweight instead of a burden. The thing was massive. Black iron, scarred by old impacts, its edges worn smooth in places where hands had held it for years.
"They do when someone wants them to be forgotten," Rovan replied
His voice was low and stable. A marine's voice. Trained to command and lead people.
Cael glanced at him. "You're assuming intent."
"I'm assuming experience," Rovan said firmly.
"Thats not the same thing."
Rovan stopped. The anchor's tip sank into the sand with a dull sound. He turned just enough to look at Cael from the corner of his eyes.
"It is if you have survived long enough."
Cael didn't argue. He filed it away instead.
They were supposed to be scouting, confirming whether northern trade pressure was bleeding into Regulus territory. The guild that issued it didn't care why the routes were shifting. They only cared about the caravans bleeding money.
Cael cared about leverage.
He extended his perception again, this time sharper. Cognition layered atop his natural awareness, measuring distances, mapping angles, tracing the small animals across the dunes. Something heavy had passed through recently. Not wagons.
Too scattered. Too chaotic.
Cael said. "Multiple groups. Armored."
Rovan nodded
They crested the final ridge together.
The camp below was a wound.
Cael stopped breathing for half a second. Not because he was shocked, he prided himself on control. Caels' mind needed the pause to recalibrate. What lay beneath them wasn't chaos; it was clean and methodical.
Burned tents collapsed inward. Hearth stones shattered. Bodies arranged where they fell, not dragged, to loot clean. This was not a raid for resources.
This was erased.
"Regulus," Rovan said quietly.
Cael followed his gaze to the red-dyed cloth scraps tangled in the sand. Nomads. Desert clan. He had heard and even seen their work before, escorting caravans through hostile stretches without complaint or reward.
Cael stepped carefully, placing his feet where sand was least disturbed. His saber remained sheathed. No threats were around. He catalogued wounds as he passed. Precision strikes. Some blunt force trauma. A few bodies showed signs of internal collapse without any external damage.
He stopped near the central hearth. The ground here was scorched deeper, glassed in places. Residual distortion clung to the air, faint but structured.
Seals.
Cael straightened slowly. "This wasn't a random contract crew."
Rovan crouched, pressing two fingers into the sand. The grains darkened slightly, dampening as Water Axiom seeped outward from the ground. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them.
"Military trained," he said.
Cael's jaw had tightened. That narrowed the list of suspects uncomfortably fast.
They searched in silence after that.
It was Cael who found him.
He almost missed the sign entirely. A faint distortion near the edge of the camp, where the dunes dipped and rose unevenly, His perception had caught it.
"Hold," Cael said.
Rovan stopped immediately.
Cael moved forward, slow, deliberate. He crouched and brushed the sand aside with his hand.
A boy lay half buried beneath it.
Red eyes. Red hair matted with blood and grit. The marks along his arms caught Cael's attention first; they were jagged, branching lines like lightning scars burned into flesh.
Axiom backlash.
"He's alive," Cael said.
Rovan was beside him in an instant. The anchor was set down with care; its sheer presence changed the air subtly, grounding it. Rovan pressed two fingers to the boy's neck.
"Barely," he said. "Paths are a mess."
The boy's breathing was shallow, uneven. Each inhale came with a faint tremor, as if he was fighting his own body.
Cael is studying him, mind already figuring out his usefulness.
A survivor meant witnesses. Witnesses meant complications. Complications meant leverage.
Or liability.
"What do you want to do?" Cael asked.
Rovan looked at the boy's face, then at the ruined camp behind them.
"We can't leave him."
"That's not what I asked Rovan."
"We take him with us."
"Cael exhaled slowly through his nose. "He's unstable. If his Axiom surges again–."
"I can bind it."
"And if you can't?"
Rovan's hand tightened briefly on the anchor's haft. "You're doubting me, Cael?"
Cael looked at the lightning scars, the fractured channels barely visible beneath the skin. Oversized reserves, untrained containment. The kind of potential that couldn't be ignored, and with the right training, can turn you into a dangerous fighter.
Interesting.
"Fine," Cael said.
Rovan nodded once.
They worked quickly. Rovan traced a seal into the sand beside the boy. The Water Axiom reinforced the boy and stabilized his breathing.
They lifted him together. He was lighter than Cael expected. All sharp angles and tension, even unconscious.
As they turned away from the camp, Cael adjusted his grip and looked ahead.
This contract had just changed.
Far above them, the desert sky remained clear.