Shatterdeep did not like its masters.

  Ragith-kar felt the rejection every time his foot touched the polished black stone of the upper spires. The citadel hummed, a frequency grating against demon bone, designed to unsettle anything not Sangrathi.

  He moved with haste through the Hall of Whispers, a corridor lined with statues of the ancient masters. Their faces had been chiseled away centuries ago by jealous warlords, leaving only blank, smooth masks to judge the usurpers.

  We squat in a citadel that does not belong to us, Ragith-kar thought, his claws clicking against the stone.

  He reached the Western Balcony, a vast, open-air platform where the wind howled against the railing. Three figures lounged against the stone with the casual grace of creatures who did not fear the fall.

  Kael, Vora, and Hassin.

  Sandsworn, the elite messengers of the court. Their skin ranged from pale dust to burnished gold. They wore light armor of woven leather and brass, gear meant for speed, not siege. Unlike the Iron-Born who clanked through the halls, these three stood in silence, their runes dim.

  They straightened as Ragith-kar approached.

  "The Sovereign has spoken," Ragith-kar said, his voice rasping over the gale. "The outer rim is to be abandoned."

  Vora, a female with horns etched in spiraling wind-glyphs, tilted her head. "Abandoned?"

  "The Wastes are shifting," Ragith-kar said. "Thra-uk and I were tracking a Sangrathi trail out by the Western Ravines. We didn't find the prey. We found something else… a sickness."

  He stepped closer, his runes dimming as he recalled the fight.

  "Our kin attacked us with abandon. No recognition. Just hunger. Something turned them into rabid beasts."

  "A plague?" Hassin asked.

  "Or something worse," Ragith-kar admitted. "We found two travelers. Outsiders. A necromancer and a strange human. They claimed to have fought the same."

  "You left Thra-uk with strangers?" Kael pressed, his voice sharp with disbelief.

  "Thra-uk can handle himself," Ragith-kar snapped. "He is escorting them to Ironclaw. The strangers bring proof of this sickness to the court. We are to meet them there after overseeing the evacuation of the outposts."

  He looked out over the darkening horizon.

  "I do not know if the infected we fought were the first, or if there are thousands more hidden in the sand. We cannot take that chance. If we leave the outposts isolated, they could be picked off before they even know they are under attack."

  He turned back to them, his expression grim.

  "We pull them back to Shatterdeep. We gather our strength and assess the threat from a position of power. If it is a singular event, we reclaim the posts. If it is a war… we will be ready."

  "Better safe than sorry," Vora murmured, nodding.

  "We move together," Ragith-kar commanded. "Form a Slipstream. We hit The Ridge first, sweep back to Salt Hollow, and cover Blackcrest last. The order is absolute. If they refuse to leave, let the Wastes have them. We save the willing."

  He didn't wait for an answer before stepping off the ledge.

  Gravity took him for a heartbeat, and then he shattered. His body unraveled into a cloud of mica-flecked sand. A second later, Vora, Kael, and Hassin dissolved behind him.

  They didn't fly as four separate storms. They merged.

  Their four clouds slammed together, weaving into a cyclone of concentrated force. The world blurred. The sound of the wind vanished, replaced by the high-pitched scream of air splitting apart. They became a spear of dust, shooting across the Wastes faster than any hawk, racing toward the southern edge.

  - - -

  The Slipstream tore across the Wastes.

  Ragith-kar and his Sandsworn banked hard, dropping out of the high currents as The Ridge came into view.

  It was a fortress built on a knife's edge. The outpost sat atop a massive, flat plateau of basalt that jutted out from the mountain range like a shelf. Along the sheer cliff face, a three-hundred-foot drop to the valley floor. The demons had built a formidable wall, accompanied by watchtowers that hung over the valley.

  Behind that wall lay the camp itself: a sprawling flat assembly of barracks, smithies, and training yards, protected from the wind by the mountain at its back. It looked impregnable. A fortress where the only enemy was the fall.

  The Sandsworn landed in the plaza's center with a thunderous blast.

  Ragith-kar materialized first. His feet hit the stone with enough force to crack it.

  Vora, Kael, and Hassin formed behind him, their runes flaring bright gold. The sudden arrival sent a dust cloud rolling over the guards.

  Gruk, the outpost's commander, stormed out of his tent. He was a slab of slate grey muscle, massive tusks scraping his cheekbones. One of his horns was sheared off at the stump, a souvenir from a past battle. He wore heavy, blackened shoulder pads bristling with iron spikes, the armor of the Stone-Gougers, the heavy infantry regiment that held the Ridge

  In his hand, he hefted a double-headed war axe, its blades chipped and stained,

  "Sandsworn?" Gruk barked, shoving through his own soldiers. "You drop in unannounced? You crack my earth? Explain yourself."

  "The Sovereign has spoken," Ragith-kar rasped. "The outer rim is to be abandoned. You are to evacuate to Shatterdeep."

  Gruk scoffed. He drove the haft of his axe into the stone floor. It struck with a boom, cracking the flagstone, and stood there quivering.

  He crossed his massive arms, leaning back against the weapon's haft. The metal of his spiked pads groaned.

  "Abandon the Ridge?" Gruk bellowed, a harsh, grating laugh erupting from his chest. He looked around at the gathering circle of Stone-Gougers.

  "You hear that, boys? Dagrimor thinks we should run."

  A ripple of laughter went through the demons. It was a rough, ugly sound, the sound of soldiers who had survived too much to be afraid of orders.

  "We have held this rock for fifty years," Gruk growled, turning back to Ragith-kar. "Against sand-wyrms, rock-slides, and starvation. We do not run from shadows, messenger."

  "You are not running from shadows," Vora hissed, stepping forward. "You are running from a sickness."

  "A sickness?" Gruk laughed again, shaking his head. "We are Iron-Born. Sickness does not touch us. Go tell Dagrimor that the Ridge stands. If he wants us to move, he can come move us him-"

  Thunk.

  A wet, heavy sound hit the ground between them.

  Gruk frowned. He looked down. An ash-stalker lizard lay on the stones. It was dead, its body bloated and green with rot.

  Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

  More bodies rained down. Lizards, rats, and beetles fell like hail. They pinged off armor and splattered against the stone.

  "What in the-"

  A shadow swept over them.

  A massive carrion bird dove from the sky, its wings ragged and dripping. It didn't screech. It slammed into an unsuspecting guard, its talons digging into his shoulders.

  The demon roared, grappling with the beast. The bird didn't peck. It vomited a stream of black sludge into the demon's open mouth, choking his scream.

  The guard convulsed. With a roar of disgust, he seized the bird by its neck and wings and ripped it apart. The creature tore in half with a wet crunch, spraying black ichor across the demon's chest and face.

  He threw the ruined carcass down, spitting bile. "Filth!"

  Gruk looked up. "Sky vermin!" The sky was dark with them. Dozens of infected birds circled in a silent, tightening vortex.

  "Clear the sky!" Ragith-kar roared, his voice cutting through the screeching wind. "Wind-blades!"

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  The Sandsworn moved as one entity, hands dropping to their waists to unhook heavy weapons from iron belt-loops with a synchronized clack.

  They held brutal Khopeshes, sickle-swords with spines of rough, compressed sandstone and hooked edges honed to a translucent amber glass.

  Moments passed before they struck.

  It began at their brows. The etched runes on their curled horns flared with a blinding, desert-gold light. The energy cascaded downward, racing across their skin like liquid lightning, flooding down their arms and pooling in their hands.

  With a synchronized grunt, they slashed upward.

  The power discharged through the glass edges. The Khopeshes hurled arcs of compressed, vacuum-sharp air that screamed into the sky. The volley of invisible blades shredded the flock in an instant. There was no impact, only severance. The creatures fell apart, and a deluge of severed wings, black feathers, and rot began to plummet toward the unit.

  "Hold!" Ragith-kar bellowed.

  He saw the black fluid misting in the air, the same infectious ichor the necromancer warned him about.

  Ragith-kar spun his scimitar in a tight, blurring circle above his head. The air obeyed without question. A localized cyclone erupted around the unit, a shimmering sphere of high-velocity wind.

  The falling gore hit the wind-shield and was blasted sideways. The black blood, severed limbs, and rotting meat were deflected and sprayed out over the walls rather than raining down on the soldiers.

  "The blood is how it spreads!" Ragith-kar roared over the dying gale, locking eyes with the commander. "It is the source, Gruk! Do not let it enter your body!"

  "Shields!" Gruk thundered, his voice like grinding stones. "Let no drop of blood enter you!"

  The demon attacked by the bird already turned.

  He didn't have time to scream before the black veins reached his eyes, turning them to milky voids. The Stone Gouger broke formation. He didn't look like a soldier anymore; he moved like a rabid animal.

  With a shriek that sounded like tearing metal, he blurred across the courtyard and lunged at his commander.

  Gruk froze, shock delaying his hand as one of his own flew at his throat.

  Ragith-kar stepped in. He slashed his Khopesh through the air, runes flaring gold. A blade of compressed air shot forward.

  The infected demon's head slid off its shoulders. The body collapsed, black blood pooling on the stones.

  "That," Ragith-kar whispered, "is the sickness."

  Gruk stared at the headless corpse of his soldier. Then, a deeper sound shook the cliff. A rhythmic, heavy pounding against the outer wall.

  "They're climbing!" a sentry screamed. "They're climbing the sheer face!"

  Gruk snapped out of his daze. He ripped his axe from the stone. The shock vanished, replaced by the cold, hard iron of command.

  "Stone-Gougers!" Gruk bellowed, his voice shaking the dust from the barracks. "Clear the parapet! Heavy iron to the front! Everyone else, to the tunnel! Grab what you can carry and move! We are leaving!"

  The camp exploded into motion.

  Stone-Gougers, a wall of muscle and iron, surged forward. They carried warhammers with heads the size of anvils, double-bladed greataxes, and flanged maces. They lined the wall's edge. Weapons raised. A row of executioners waiting for the infected.

  "Trigger the Sweeps!" Gruk roared. "Clean the face!"

  Two demons at the ends of the wall seized massive iron levers and threw them down with force. With a scream of metal, weighted iron chains dropped from the wall.

  They swung horizontally across the sheer face of the cliff like pendulums of doom.

  Dozens of climbers were smashed against the wall, their bodies broken and flung into the abyss. The chains swung back and forth, clearing the stone of anything clinging to it.

  For a moment, the cliff face was clear.

  But the horde didn't stop. They didn't care about the chains. They climbed over the dead.

  The chains swung again, pulping bodies, but the infected grabbed the links, using the weapon as a ladder. They swarmed up the chains, hand over hand, screeching as they rode the pendulum up to the parapet.

  A massive infected brute crested the wall. It shook off a hit from the chain. It roared, black ichor spraying from its mouth.

  "Let em' taste iron!" Gruk bellowed.

  The Stone-Gougers went to work.

  A warhammer descended. It crushed the brute's skull into its chest. An axe swept sideways. It cleaved two smaller infected in half at the waist.

  The Iron-Born fought with a rhythmic, piston-like violence. Their heavy weapons rose and fell like hammers in a forge.

  But for every one they crushed, three more scrambled over the edge.

  "Too many!" Hassin shouted, blasting a group back with a blast of wind.

  "We must retreat!" Ragith-kar shouted. "There must be hundreds over the wall!"

  Gruk beheaded an infected as it crested the wall. "Pull back! Rolling retreat!"

  The defenders collapsed their line, backing toward the large exit ramp carved into the mountain at the rear of the camp. The demons were already streaming down it, vanishing into the dark toward the Salt Hollow outpost miles away.

  The infected surged forward, sensing the weakness.

  "Sandsworn to me!" Ragith-kar's voice cracked with strain. "We need to give them time!"

  The group slammed their palms into the ground.

  A massive wave of sand erupted from the plaza floor. Vora, Kael, and Hassin poured their power into the grit, instantly hardening the rising wave it into a jagged barricade of compressed sandstone.

  The wall slammed into the pursuing horde with the force of a landslide

  "Stone-Gougers!" Gruk bellowed. "To the ramp!"

  The heavy infantry scrambled toward the exit.

  Ragith-kar grabbed Gruk's arm, his grip like iron. "Check them!"

  Gruk glared at him. "We have no-"

  "If they enter that tunnel, everyone dies!" Ragith-kar hissed, pointing to a soldier stumbling nearby, black veins already racing up his neck.

  Gruk saw the soldier twitch, his eyes rolling back into milky voids. The commander stiffened, his face going pale.

  "HALT!" Gruk roared, his voice cracking with panic and rage. "Helmets off! Gauntlets off! NOW!"

  The column froze. Armor clattered as gear was stripped.

  "If you have the black veins, you are already dead!" Gruk bellowed, drawing his axe. "Step forward for the blade!"

  It was instant chaos.

  Three demons near the front didn't step forward. They began to convulse, their spines arching, snarls ripping from their throats as the change took hold.

  "PUT THEM DOWN!"

  The soldiers standing next to them didn't hesitate. There was no ceremony. They kicked the turning soldiers behind the knees, forcing them to the ground.

  Three axes fell in perfect, brutal unison. The heads rolled across the stone floor, dark blood pooling.

  Ragith-kar flinched, his eyes widening at the ruthlessness, but he had never seen a unit butcher their own with such mechanical efficiency.

  "Clear!" Gruk shouted, stepping over a headless corpse without looking down.

  Ragith-kar's eyes darted between the retreating soldiers and the sandstone barricade. An impact against the sand wall shook the floor, causing cracks to appear in the middle of the barricade.

  Ragith-kar flinched. "The wall is failing, you must move!"

  Gruk stood motionless, his head cocked, listening to the rhythm of the blows against the barricade. They were heavy, rhythmic, and terrifyingly strong.

  "Something massive is with them." Gruk rumbled.

  He turned to his lieutenant, a scarred warrior named Korg.

  "There are secondary collapse-points at the half-mile mark. Blow the supports." Gruk ordered, his voice low and urgent.

  Korg's eyes widened. "Commander? That will seal the lower tunnels. We won't be able to return."

  "That is the point," Gruk growled. "This block?" He gestured to the massive stone slab hanging above the entrance. "It's just rock. Whatever is hitting that wall will chew through this slab, too. We need layers. You need time. Go!"

  Korg took off into the tunnel, disappearing into the dark.

  "Gruk!" Ragith-kar yelled, drifting closer. "You have to go! Now!"

  Gruk ignored him. He looked at a handful of Stone-Gougers who remained behind, ten burly demons, their weapons still dripping with blood. They weren't moving toward the tunnel. They were watching their commander.

  "You ten," Gruk said. "With me."

  They nodded, forming a phalanx at the center of the plaza, placing themselves between the breaking wall and the tunnel mouth.

  Ragith-kar realized what was happening. He grabbed Gruk's pauldron.

  "Don't be a fool," the Sandsworn hissed. "Seal the tunnel and fight another day!"

  "There is no other day for those people in the dark," Gruk said, looking at the cracks spreading like lightning across the sandstone. "If we leave now, those beasts break through the blockade in no time. If we stay... we make them bleed for every inch. We give those below valuable time."

  Ragith-kar turned to Hassin, the youngest Sandsworn. "Fly ahead to Blackcrest," he ordered. "Vora, and I will oversee the evacuation at Salt Hollow. Warn them. Take Kael with you."

  Gruk grabbed Hassin's shoulder. "Tell the Warlord their... tell him, the mountain weeps."

  Hassin froze, then nodded grimly. He dissolved into wind with Kael and shot into the sky.

  "And you," Gruk growled, shoving Ragith-kar toward the open air. "Leave now, unless you wish to be a part of the slaughter."

  Ragith-kar hesitated. He looked for the stoic resolve of stone in Gruk's eyes, but he didn't find it. He found terror. Gruk's pupils were dilated, his jaw trembling with the effort to keep himself composed.

  "Fight well, Stone-Gouger," Ragith-kar whispered.

  He grabbed Vora's arm. "Up! Now!"

  The two Sandsworn kicked off the ground, their bodies dissolving into streaks of beige and gold mist as they ascended into the slipstream.

  Gruk was alone with his ten.

  He turned to the tunnel entrance. The massive stone slab hung above it, held by a single tension chain. Beyond that threshold lay the dark, cool tunnels. Safety. He could hear the retreating footsteps of the refugees. They were slow.

  I am fast, the thought seduced him, unbidden and shameful. My legs are fresh.

  Gruk took a step toward the tunnel. The air smelling of damp earth and life washed over his face, sweet and inviting.

  He looked at his hands. They were shaking so violently that his axe rattled in his grip. He didn't want to be eaten. He didn't want to die screaming while things with too many teeth tore him apart.

  Gruk looked around the outpost. He had held the Ridge for fifty years. Fifty years of standing on these walls, looking down at the scree, raining death on whatever foolish creature of the Wastes tried to scale the heights. They had always been the predators, the iron-shelled kings of the ridge.

  But as the floor shuddered beneath his boots, vibrating with the strength of the monstrosities tearing at the barricade, Gruk knew the truth.

  They were no longer the hunters. They were the prey.

  He looked at the ten Stone-Gougers who had stayed. They were watching him, eyes wide. He saw the desperation there. They were waiting for a lie. They wanted their commander to bang his chest, to tell them that iron was stronger than rot, that they would hold the line and win the day.

  Gruk opened his mouth to give them the fire, but it died in his throat. He met their gazes with eyes full of a terrible, heavy sorrow.

  "No training I gave you could prepare us for this," he said, his voice rough and quiet.

  He walked over to the tension chain, tapping the cold iron link with the flat of his axe. The tunnel draft blew past him, smelling of life.

  "The way is open," Gruk said, refusing to look away from them. "If you run now, you might catch the rear guard. I will not blame you. I will not name you cowards. No one should have to die like this."

  The silence stretched. Two of the younger demons shifted. One took a half-step toward the dark tunnel, his nerve failing. He looked at Gruk. He saw the way the commander's hand trembled on the axe haft. He saw that Gruk was just as terrified as he was.

  The soldier swallowed hard. He looked at the tunnel, then back at his commander. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled his foot back and stepped back into the line.

  They wouldn't let him die alone.

  Gruk let out a long breath and gave a slow, solemn nod.

  "I am sorry that it ends here, brothers."

  He didn't wait for a response. He swung the axe.

  Snap.

  The tension chain whipped away. The massive stone block, weighing tons, slammed down. It hit the floor with an earth-shaking boom, dropping perfectly into the locking channel.

  The way was shut

  Behind them, the enemy's sound changed. The rhythmic pounding stopped, replaced by the wet, tearing sound of crumbling stone. Black, glistening arms punched through the cracks in the sandstone. The barricade dissolved.

  Gruk forewent any speech. There were no words left for the dead. He simply threw his head back and let loose a roar, a raw, wordless sound of defiance against the inevitable.

  The soldiers took it up, screaming the chant they had drilled until it was instinct, a mantra to drown out their own terror.

  "WE ARE THE ROCK!"

  "WE DO NOT BREAK!"

  From his vantage point high in the sky, Ragith-kar looked back one last time. He watched the sandstone wall vanish in a cloud of dust. He saw the tidal wave of black rot crash down, swallowing the eleven grey figures in an instant.

  The chanting cut off abruptly, replaced by the roar of the swarm.

  Ragith-kar looked away, his jaw set hard. He caught the high winds, banking sharply toward the south, leaving the silence of the Ridge behind.