Page 79 of New World

Dorane let out a rough chuckle, his hands tightening around her waist.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

Zoak moved like a specter across the desert, his skidder carving a silent path over the wind-swept dunes. The twin suns had begun their slow descent, stretching his shadow long across the sand, but the heat remained relentless, pressing against him like a living thing. He barely noticed.

The rhythmic hum of the skidder beneath him was a constant, steady vibration—a pulse against his skin, a heartbeat of the hunt. His muscles were loose, his mind razor-sharp, honed into singular focus. This was what he lived for. The moment before the kill.

As the canyons rose in the distance, carved by the winds of a thousand storms, Zoak allowed himself a small, satisfied smirk. Dorane had made this easy for him.

He knew exactly where the man would go.

Back to the beginning.

Dorane wanted to take the woman to the ruins of his old village—to the bones of his past, to the ghosts that whispered in the sand. Zoak could almost taste the bitter irony. The fool sought closure, perhaps.

I will give him that, Zoak thought darkly. His past, his present, and his future—ending where it all began.

The skidder wove through the narrow canyon passes, the air shifting cooler in the shadowed ravines before opening back into the scalding heat of the sunlit dunes. Zoak’s slitted pupils adjusted to the glare instantly, his body moving fluidly with each shift of the skidder. He had traveled these types of landscapes before.

For others, the Aetherial desert was a death trap—unforgiving, ruthless. To him, it was a hunting ground.

The canyon where the village was located appeared on the horizon, concealed by the high, rough walls formed by a river that dried up long ago. The rounded structures, once home to families and laughter, were now hollow ruins, their dome roofs cracked, walls scorched and half-buried in sand blown in by storms.

Remnants of fire and destruction still marred the ground, deep gouges in the earth where explosions had turned homes into unmarked graves. The village was a corpse, and soon, it would welcome two more bodies into its graveyard.

Zoak pulled the skidder off the main path, guiding it behind a jagged outcropping of rock where the canyon sloped down toward the valley. The vehicle would be hidden here, out of sight from the high road leading into the village.

He dismounted with the fluid grace of a predator, his boots sinking slightly into the sand as he moved toward the edge of the slope, lifting his view-spotter to scan the ruins below.

The village was silent. The wind moved sluggishly through the open streets, shifting dust in lazy curls and kicking up miniature dust devils that danced across the ground before dissolving.

There was no other movement. No sound. Just the hush of abandonment. He had arrived headed of Dorane and his woman.

Zoak’s gaze swept the area methodically. His mind worked in calculations—distances, lines of sight, elevation advantages. He noted the remnants of old buildings, the hollowed-out husk of what had once been a communal gathering space, the dried-out well in the center of the square.

Then his attention flicked toward the graves.

The small mounds along the slope above the village were unremarkable at first. He dismissed them as nothing but old bones—Dorane’s childhood friends, likely. Meaningless.

But as his scope tracked lower, he stilled.

Two mounds. Different from the rest. They were set apart, carefully tended. Real burials.

Zoak adjusted the focus on his view-spotter. The markers were newer, the material smooth and polished. Thick, etched crystal—not the crude, hand-carved stones the other graves bore. Even in the light of the suns, the crystalline structures gave off a faint glow.

He sneered. How poetic. Of course Dorane would visit these graves. That was where Zoak would strike.

He pulled the scope back, adjusting for a better angle. The open area would make it difficult to launch a surprise attack up close—there was too much light, too much space. The woman would sense him. She was too sharp, too attuned to danger. He could not allow her that advantage.

No, this fight would begin from a distance.

His plan shifted. He would strike Dorane first, wound him—not enough to kill, but enough to cripple, to slow him down. The woman would stay close—she would not leave Dorane defenseless. That would give him the opportunity he needed.

Then, he could take his time.

He would drive them into a corner, force them into a position where they had no escape. He would disable the woman, leave her alive but helpless. Then, he would hang them both—like trophies—like messages left for the ghosts of this place.

Let Dorane hear the echoes of the past. Let the woman watch him suffer.

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