Dagrimor's mobilization of Shatterdeep turned the citadel into a churning hive of iron and noise.

  Xylora moved through the chaos like a drop of ink in water. She had shed the silks of the court for the raiment of war.

  She wore the battle-plate of the High Sandsworn, a masterwork commissioned during the height of the Dreadfire Campaign. The armor was a suit of interlocking chitin plates dyed a midnight blue that bordered on black, fitted so perfectly to her form that it moved like a second skin, making no sound as she walked.

  At her hips rested her twin short swords. They were not standard issue; they were relics, curved blades of folded void-steel stolen from the Sangrathi. Their hilts were wrapped in the cured skin of a demon caste hunted to extinction during the Sangrathi's wild hunts. The pommels were set with fiery gemstones.

  Tucked beneath her arm was her helm, an intricate, terrifying piece of artistry. It was sleek and swept back, specially crafted to leave room for her elegant ivory horns, along with a visor of smooth, black glass that hid the eyes completely, designed to strip away humanity and leave only a faceless killer.

  Xylora didn't linger; her path was sharp and deliberate, cutting through the noise toward the upper barracks. She sought the other Sandsworn who had traveled ahead of Ragith-kar to alert Blackcrest and Salt Hollow of the looming disaster.

  She found them in the prep-chamber, looking diminished. Their recent journey had exhausted them.

  Xylora materialized in the doorway, her surprise presence catching the Sandsworn off guard.

  "Where is Ragith-kar?" she demanded.

  Hassin flinched, dropping a greave. He looked up, his pale eyes widening as he recognized the First Assassin. "We do not know, Mistress Xylora. We heard he returned to Shatterdeep, but took off into the wind not long after."

  Xylora's golden eyes narrowed. "He is not in his quarters, nor was he present for the briefing."

  "He must mourn," Kael said, not looking up from his whetstone. "Vora was... she was his anchor."

  Xylora let out a sharp hiss of annoyance. "Sentimental fool."

  She knew where to look now.

  Ragith-kar and Vora used to vanish for days at a time. They always went to the same place, the Spire of Silence, the highest peak in the jagged range overlooking the Wastes. It was the only place where the wind screamed loud enough to drown out the thoughts of a Sandsworn.

  "Gear up," Xylora ordered. "Full kit. We are leaving."

  Hassin blinked. "Leaving? Where?"

  "To retrieve our stray," Xylora said. "And then, to Nethervale. Try to keep up."

  They met her on the upper balcony of the citadel, a jutting platform of obsidian that hung over the abyss of a canyon. The wind here was a physical force.

  Xylora checked her weapons one last time, sliding the intricate helm over her head. She glanced at Kael and Hassin. They were ready, though they seemed wary.

  "Slipstream," Xylora announced.

  "To the Spire?" Hassin asked, looking at the distant, cloud-piercing peak miles away.

  Xylora offered a smile beneath the mask. "Keep up." She stepped off the ledge.

  For a heartbeat, she fell. Then, her body dissolved. She became a focused, sentient ribbon of high-pressure air and abrasive grit.

  The sound of her transition was like a whip breaking the sound barrier.

  She shot forward, a streak of black and gold tearing through the sky. Behind her, Kael and Hassin shifted, their forms blurring into dusty whirlwinds as they scrambled to follow, but they were sluggish compared to her.

  Xylora felt the ecstasy of the speed. This was freedom. She punched through a bank of smog, the wind roaring in her ears, her consciousness expanding to feel every current, every thermal. She could feel the two Sandsworn struggling in her wake, buffeted by the turbulence she left behind. She didn't slow down. If they couldn't fly in her shadow, they would be useless in Nethervale.

  The Spire of Silence rushed toward her, a needle of gray rock piercing the sky.

  Xylora banked hard, aiming for the hollowed-out cave near the summit. She hit the stone floor of the cave with a boom like a thunderclap.

  One moment, she was wind; the next, she was standing solid, her hand resting on the hilts of her swords. Dust swirled around her before settling down.

  Seconds later, Kael and Hassin arrived, stumbling out of their forms, gasping for breath, their forms flickering as they struggled to maintain cohesion after so much traveling and fighting.

  Xylora ignored them. Through the black glass of her visor, she fixed her gaze on the figure sitting at the edge of the cave, legs dangling over the miles-long drop.

  Ragith-kar didn't look back. His shoulders were slumped, his usually vibrant runes dull and gray against his pale skin. He was staring out at the Wastes, but Xylora doubted he was looking at anything.

  She gestured for Kael and Hassin to stay back as she approached Ragith-kar, her claws clicking on the stone. She reached up and unsealed her helm, pulling it off to let the biting grit hit her face.

  "The view has not changed in a thousand years, Ragith-kar," she said, her voice cutting through the howling wind outside. "It is just sand and fire."

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  Ragith-kar remained silent for a long moment. "It is quieter here," he whispered, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping together. "I can't hear the hum of the citadel. I can't hear... her."

  Xylora stopped a few paces behind him.

  For a second, the sound twisted in her ears. It sounded like a scream she hadn't heard in centuries. The memory was so sharp, so physical, that her breath hitched in her chest.

  She looked at Ragith-kar's slumped back and saw a mirror. She knew exactly what he was listening for. She knew that the silence was worse than the screaming, because the silence meant they were truly gone.

  She forced the ghost back into the dark. Pity was a luxury they could not afford.

  "Vora is gone," Xylora said, her tone devoid of softness. "Or worse, she is something else now. Something that serves the enemy."

  Ragith-kar flinched, his hands gripping the edge of the cliff.

  "We have orders," Xylora continued, stepping closer until her shadow fell over him. "Dagrimor has mobilized Shatterdeep. And I have been tasked with scouting Nethervale to see exactly what kind of nightmare we are facing."

  She leaned down, her voice dropping to a dangerous, commanding whisper.

  "I need a tracker. I need a killer. I do not need a widower feeling sorry for himself on a rock."

  Her hand drifted to her hip, her fingers wrapping around the hilt of her curved short sword, the void-steel blades she had stolen from the Sangrathi wild hunt that took everything from her.

  "I know it burns, Ragith," she whispered, her thumb tracing the cold pommel of the enemy's weapon. "I know it feels like your chest has been hollowed out with a spoon. But you cannot let it consume you."

  She tightened her grip on the sword until the grip creaked

  "You take that sorrow," she hissed, "and you pack it down until it is unbreakable. You turn it into fuel. That is how we survive."

  Ragith-kar turned his head. His eyes were hollow, rimmed with the red dust of exhaustion.

  "You will mourn her later, Ragith-kar." She straightened up, her golden runes flaring with a sudden spike of power. "You will scream at the moons and weep until your sand turns to mud. But right now? You are a weapon of the Ashen Court. And we are at war."

  She extended a hand, her onyx fingers sharp and demanding.

  "Come, my kin, there is much to do."

  Ragith-kar took her hand. His grip was cold, his skin rough like sandstone, but he hauled himself up. The grief in his eyes hardened, turning from a weep to a glare. He nodded to Kael and Hassin, a silent apology, and then turned to Xylora.

  "Lead the way," he rasped.

  They launched.

  The journey to the far west was a gauntlet. Even in the Slipstream, the distance was punishing. They tore across the land, leaving the familiar heat of the eastern Wastes behind. Below them, the world grew darker, the sand shifting from rust-red to a bruised, necrotic purple.

  By the time they neared Nethervale, the sun had vanished. The sky was choked by thick, unnatural clouds that swirled like oil on water.

  But Nethervale was not dark. From miles away, they saw the lights.

  A sea of torches and campfires sprawled across the land, their collective brilliance casting a wash of light that painted the underbelly of the clouds in violent hues. The clouds glowed with a sick, vibrant viridian, clashing against patches of glacial blue, cold enough to freeze the eye.

  The liches had been busy.

  As they drew closer, Xylora's enhanced vision began picking out details. From the earth below, where fires burned, hundreds of cannibals gathered.

  They swarmed the outskirts of Nethervale like lice, a sea of desperate humanity pressed against the ancient stone of the ruins. And moving among them, darker and taller, were the shapes of the infected, easily thousands of them, a silent legion waiting for a command.

  Xylora signaled the drop.

  Usually, a slipstream exit was an explosion, a sonic crack that announced their arrival like a thunderbolt.

  Xylora knew they needed stealth, so she began to weave the air, dragging against the momentum.

  Behind her, the other Sandsworn panicked. The Slipstream required speed to maintain cohesion; without it, gravity took hold. They plummeted toward the cloud layer, their forms threatening to scatter into the wind.

  Xylora extended her hands, fingers dancing in intricate, complex patterns that the younger Sandsworn had never been taught.

  She commanded the wind with ease, spinning a cushion of pressurized air beneath them, a silent vortex that caught their falling forms. The roar of the wind died down, giving way to a suffocating silence.

  They dropped through the cloud layer, the viridian light washing over their armor.

  Below them, a small camp of cannibals sat nestled in a ravine about half a mile outside Nethervale. They chewed on bones around a fire that looked suspiciously human.

  Xylora hit the ground in the center of the circle.

  She landed in a low crouch, her impact absorbed entirely by a ripple of sand she manifested beneath her feet. As the cannibals froze, she ran her tongue over her lips, a feral grin splitting her face.

  "Who's ready to play?"

  The golden sigils lacing her body blazed to life with a harsh, divine glow. Before a single hand could tighten around a weapon hilt, she snapped her fingers upward. A ring of loose earth rose around her, spinning violently until it blurred. With a sharp gesture, she sent it expanding outward. Particles of sand, honed as sharp as glass, blasted into the faces of the men surrounding her.

  Agonized screams tore through the camp as the men clawed at their bleeding eyes, blinded in an instant.

  Xylora didn't wait. She scooped a handful of suspended sand into her left palm and slicked her right hand over it, instantly fusing the grit into a translucent, razor-thin blade. With a casual flick, she sent it singing through the air. It sheared through the neck of the cannibal in front of her, taking his head off before he even knew he was dying.

  She drew her twin void-steel blades and flowed into the violence, dancing between two men. They collapsed, clutching spilling entrails, as she backflipped away from the spray. With a violent twist of her hips, she launched the blade in her left hand. It flew true, burying itself in the chest of another. A split second later, she hurled the right, driving the steel through the eye socket of a screaming man.

  Now empty-handed, she snapped her wrist toward the ground.

  A ridge of sand leaped up, elongating and fusing into a segmented, razor-sharp whip. Xylora swung it in a savage, horizontal arc. The whip hissed through the air, finding the throats of the remaining survivors in a single, fluid motion.

  Silence fell as three bodies hit the dirt in unison.

  Xylora strolled over to the corpses, yanking her swords free with a wet schlick before wiping them clean. She looked around at the carnage and let out a loud, disappointed click of her tongue.

  By the time Kael, Hassin, and Ragith-kar touched down, weapons drawn and ready for battle, the ravine was a graveyard.

  Xylora stood amidst the corpses. Her blades were already sheathed. There was no blood on her armor. She stood perfectly still, her chest rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic cadence, her head tilted back as if savoring the metallic scent of the fresh kill.

  For a moment, the Sandsworn just stared at her. They were killers, trained in the pits of Shatterdeep, but this kind of violence couldn't be taught.

  "Hardly a sport." She crouched beside the severed head of the first man she'd killed. With a single finger, she poked the cheek, rocking the head back and forth on the dirt like a bored child playing with a broken toy.

  "Clear the bodies," Xylora whispered, her voice husky with the thrill of the violence. "Drag them into the shadows. If a patrol finds them, the alarm goes up."

  "Mistress..." Hassin breathed, looking at the corpses.

  "Xylora, this is supposed to be a reconnaissance mission," Ragith-kar chastised her, stepping over a mangled corpse toward her. He seethed through bared fangs, his eyes darting toward Nethervale. "Someone could have heard us!"

  Xylora stood, dusting off her knees with maddening slowness. "Calm yourself. This camp was the furthest removed from the others." She glanced around at the oppressive stillness of the ravine. "No one heard. Or else we'd know already."

  She turned her black visor toward Nethervale, pointing toward the ruined city, where the blue and green lights churned against the dark sky. "Let's go have some fun."