Night bled slowly over the barrens.

  The Vermillion Troupe made camp in a loose half-circle beneath the shadow of the quarry caves, the wagons forming a battered, uneven wall against the open flats. No fires burned — no flickering flames to give away their position. The salt winds had quieted to a dry, restless hush, carrying the faint tang of brine and old stone.

  ProlixalParagon sat on the tongue of a wagon, sharpening his dagger by touch alone, the scrape of whetstone soft and steady in the gathering dark. His silver fur, still streaked with salt dust, shimmered faintly in the pale light of a dying crescent moon. The black-marble swirls along his arms caught the gleam.

  Around him, the Troupe moved with quiet efficiency. Fennicians tended to the wounded — splinting twisted limbs, binding cracked ribs. Goblins hunkered by the wagons, patching broken wheels with scavenged wood, refitting loosened axle bolts. Someone passed a basket of dried fruit and old flatbread. No one spoke loudly.

  This wasn’t a camp for lingering.

  They’d settle injuries, make repairs, and when the worst of it was mended, they’d move on.

  ProlixalParagon’s ears twitched toward the caves.

  Dark mouths in the quarry wall, long abandoned. The salt deposits along the stone rim were old, the marks of pick and chisel faded but clear to his trained eye. No fresh tracks. No signs of squatters. Just the lingering scent of stone dust and old brine.

  He slid his dagger into its sheath, dropped his caltrop pouch onto his belt, and made his way toward the nearest cave.

  “Don’t go deep,” Kaelthari murmured from her post by the wagons, bardiche balanced across her shoulders.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” ProlixalParagon called back, though a grin tugged at his muzzle.

  The cave’s air was cooler, stale with old dust. His keen eyes adjusted quickly, marking the faded tool racks along the stone walls — rusted chisels, broken sledges, cracked picks. Clay bottles sat in a toppled stack near a collapsed bench, some still marked with soot-smudged tally marks.

  Most of it was trash. Forgotten laborer’s detritus.

  But further in, near a crumbling alcove, he found a scattered pile of metal fittings, lengths of old, tarnished copper wire, and a cracked mana condenser stone — useless for channeling but good for parts.

  Tinkerer’s instinct prickled at the back of his mind.

  He crouched, brushing dust aside. A broken torque wrench. A box of flux ties. Three intact mana screw clamps. Someone had been working here once — a laborer or a field tinkerer assisting with mana drills.

  He swept them into a spare pouch.

  >+5 Tinkerer Crafting Components Acquired<

  >Broken Flux Condenser | Copper Wire (x3) | Mana Clamp (x3) | Flux Ties (x5)<

  Not much, but it was better than nothing.

  At the back of the alcove, another scattered pile of broken crates yielded a few rusted nails, a faded tool satchel too torn to be useful, and a scrap of blue-dyed cloth stamped with the old Soohan Guild seal.

  He pocketed that too. Maybe Lyra would want to see it.

  Satisfied, ProlixalParagon made his way back to camp. The wind had picked up again — a dry, rattling breath through the salt grass and broken rock.

  The wounded had been tended. Bandaged Fennicians rested against the wagons, while goblins checked wheel axles and harness straps. Ralyria stood watch at the perimeter, her spear planted in the salt crust, the pale glow of her core steady as a lantern.

  Lyra looked up as he approached, her voice low.

  “Nothing alive in there?”

  “Just bones, rust, and scraps,” ProlixalParagon said, holding up the pouch of scavenged parts.

  She gave a faint, sharp nod. “We leave as soon as repairs hold. Not safe here.”

  Marx limped by, his prosthetic leg hissing. “Road east’ll cut by the old salt bridges. Might be worse than this, but it’s drier.”

  “Drier’s better,” Kaelthari growled.

  The Troupe moved with that practiced weariness of the long-suffering. No complaints. No wasted motion. Survival was a ritual here, as old as any prayer.

  ProlixalParagon sat down by a water barrel, gnawing a strip of dried meat, the weight of his scavenged pouch a reassuring tug at his belt.

  The road ahead was still waiting. But so was the Troupe. And as long as both held, he wasn’t stopping.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The Vermillion Troupe left the quarry caves before dawn.

  No fires. No lingering. Just the groan of wagon wheels over brittle salt crust and the steady plod of oxen hooves in the predawn gloom. The eastern sky bled from gray to a sickly peach, painting the barrens in pale hues of ash and bone. The rising sun hung low and wide, an indifferent eye watching them from a sky as empty as the flats below.

  ProlixalParagon rode near the front, perched on the driver’s bench of Marx’s vardo. The dagger at his hip felt heavier than it should, and the pouch of salvaged parts from the quarry caves tugged reassuringly at his belt. The salt flats stretched endless before them — a land that devoured the careless and buried the foolish.

  Kaelthari strode alongside, bardiche across her shoulders, the chains and charms strung between her markhor horns chiming faintly in the dry wind. Ralyria paced the left flank, spear in hand, her mana core pulsing like a steady heartbeat.

  Behind them, the rest of the Troupe moved in tight formation. The wagons rattled and creaked, the canvas hangings stiff with salt crust. Oxen plodded grimly on, heads low. Fennicians and goblins alike rode weary but watchful, hands near weapons, ears flicking at every gust of wind.

  They moved east.

  Toward the salt bridges. Toward the coast. Toward whatever thin hope lay beyond the cracked horizon.

  By midmorning, the air shimmered with heat. The salt flats baked beneath the sun, rising waves of distortion blurring the long straight road of ancient stone that cut across the cracked expanse ahead.

  The salt bridges.

  Raised pathways of pale rock and weathered mortar, old Soohan engineering built before anyone still living could remember. Cracked and crumbling in places, but better than sinking wagon wheels into brine pits or cursed mud flats.

  ProlixalParagon squinted ahead.

  A dark line approached — not a storm, not a mercenary column. Another Troupe.

  Dust-coated vardos. Oxen. A half-dozen scouts moving ahead on foot. Bright cloth faded by the sun, ward-marks chalked onto the wagon sides. Goblins, Fennicians. Desert folk.

  Survivors.

  Kaelthari grunted. “Westbound.”

  They drew closer, both caravans slowing as the distance narrowed to a cautious, respectful dozen paces.

  A figure stepped forward from the other Troupe’s line — a broad-shouldered goblin matron in a patched gray cloak, her skin sun-cracked and her hair bound back in copper beads. She carried a hooked staff and wore the jagged pattern-tattoos of a saltline guide.

  “Road’s bad behind you,” the matron called, her voice low and carrying. “Hollow’s restless. You lost anything?”

  Lyra stepped down from her vardo, leaning on her staff, her silver fur dulled and lined with dust. “Lost too much,” she rasped. “But we’re whole.”

  The two caravans faced one another — the unspoken weight of life on the wheels passing between them in the dry wind.

  ProlixalParagon stepped forward. “You’re headed west. Don’t. The Hollow’s open. Revenants. A siege beast woke. Mercenaries too stupid to leave it buried.”

  The goblin matron’s face tightened. “Mercies of the dead. That’s bad ground, then.”

  “You go there, you won’t come back,” ProlixalParagon said, voice flat.

  A pause. The matron spat into the dust.

  “Then we turn north,” she decided. A sharp hand gesture sent a runner back toward the line of vardos. Orders rippled through the other Troupe. Wagons turned, oxen groaned, and the caravan veered from its westward path.

  “Good luck to you,” the matron called. “If you find clean water east, leave a mark.”

  “And if you pass a salt sink west of the marshes, burn it,” Lyra answered.

  A rough nod. No need for parting words. Caravans didn’t waste talk on the barrens.

  The other Troupe vanished into the heat shimmer, heading northward, their rattling wheels swallowed by the endless white.

  ProlixalParagon exhaled slowly, tension bleeding from his shoulders.

  “Better to warn them,” Kaelthari murmured.

  “Better to have a world where we don’t have to,” ProlixalParagon replied.

  The Vermillion Troupe rolled on. The salt bridges waited ahead, cracked stone winding toward the unseen coast. And whatever else waited beyond it.