With every league traveled west, the red sand dunes grew taller.
They rose like the crested spines of ancient sea monsters, frozen mid-breach beneath an ocean of powdered iron.
For two days after leaving the hollow of the Salt-Fugitives, the heavy four-wheeled wagon had rolled through an empire of silence.
No desert lizards darted between the rocks.
No vultures circled the pale sky.
Even the desert wind, usually sharp and hot as a blacksmith’s bellows, carried a faint, disturbing chill that smelled of stale tomb water and hardened bone.
Lu Chen walked alongside the wagon, his left hand resting lightly on the pine sideboard.
With every stride of his iron-soled boots, the hundred-degree resting heat of his True Martial Saint body poured into the loose ferric earth.
