Seven Years Later
The desert didn't change much—not on the surface. Same endless waves of sand, same bleached bones half-buried beneath dunes, same sun that could cook a man's thoughts right out of his head. But time changed people. And within the wandering bones of the Sandwalker camp, time had carved its weight into the ones who stayed.
Levi was taller now, his face sharper, his steps steadier. Thirteen winters behind him, each one harder than the last—but also quieter. Not peaceful, exactly. But not afraid.
He worked now. Trained, even. Some days with the scouts, learning how to move without stirring the dust. Others with the old woman healer, grinding herbs and wrapping bandages. He liked those days best—when things felt useful, not just survivable.
Kaan had changed too. His shoulders broader, voice lower, movements more guarded. He still had that watchful stillness, that shadowed calm that made others give him space without knowing why. But with Levi, he softened. Not quite brotherly, not quite distant. Something in between.
Sera, though—Sera had changed the most.
She didn't belong here, and she knew it. She was a noble at heart and needed to get home she missed her parents and siblings and, Not because she wasn't welcome. The Sandwalkers had let her stay, even offered her a place to grow into, like they had for the boys. But she'd never wanted it. She needed to be home, she's growing and doesn't want her parents to forget her face. From the moment her wounds healed, she'd started asking about cities, borders, caravans. About what lay beyond the dust and how to get there.
She and Levi argued about it sometimes.
"You just want to run again," he told her once acting childish refusing her to leave him.
"No," she'd said. "I want to move. There's a difference." She always kept her true origins from Levi and the others, she didn't want to be treated any differently.
Eventually, the matriarch gave her an answer: a caravan was passing through, one of the rare few that traded with the Sandwalkers without drawing steel. Sera could go with them—on trial, watched by one of the Sandwalkers' own. A woman named Amiah, flint-eyed and silent, her face a map of old burns. The matriarch trusted her like a second shadow.
Sera had come to say goodbye at dawn.
Levi met her near the camel posts, arms crossed, trying not to scowl.
"I'm not dying, you know," she said with that same crooked smirk. "You can say something better than 'don't screw it up.'"
He didn't. Not right away.
Then he said, "Don't let them change you."
Her smirk faltered just a little. "Too late for that." She mused as she began to walk away. Slow going further and deep into the sand dunes.
"You gonna say something, or just stare at her like that?" Kaan's voice drifted from behind him, dry and amused.
Levi scowled but didn't turn. "She didn't want a big goodbye."
"No one ever does," Kaan said, stepping up beside him. His height had shot up again in the last few months—he stood like a shadow at Levi's side, long-limbed and confident, a blade at one hip and a slingshot at the other. "Still. Doesn't mean you shouldn't say it."
"She said it's just for a season," Levi muttered. "That she'd come back."
Kaan shrugged. "People always say they'll come back. Doesn't mean they don't mean it. Just means they don't know for sure."
They fell into silence again, both of them watching as she walked away, swallowed up by the moving line of camels, wrapped in the morning mist of sand and distance.
They had spent a good portion of their childhoods together and now there she was leaving.
And then she was gone, dust trailing behind her as Amiah led the camel forward.
For days, Levi kept glancing toward the dunes. She taught him things, the outside world…the places outside of the sand. The trees, the lakes and oceans. Even magic, she told him all about how it worked and why she had a mana blocker collar on her neck when she was abducted. Apparently she had a bloodline ability that had a fire affinity but, she didn't say much after that. Just that she was grateful for the sand walkers healer being able to take it off.
He didn't know why it left such a hollow feeling behind. She wasn't his sister. Not really. She wasn't his anything.
But still.
He sat near the fire that night, alone at first. Until Kaan dropped beside him, silent as always.
"She'll be fine," Kaan said.
Levi didn't answer.
They sat there anyway.
And out past the flames, the wind shifted.The desert stretched endlessly beyond the camp, and in the days that followed, the wind returned in sharp fits, painting the sky with dust and gold. Levi threw himself into the work—repairing gear, organizing salvaged supplies, helping with patrols. He and Kaan had started to earn a reputation among the Sandwalkers, not just as survivors but as something else.
Desert dogs, some of the older warriors had started calling them. Lean, quick, loyal, and hard to kill.
They rode out often now—always together. The pair of them straddling the line between scouts and hunters, learning to track through shifting dunes, to read the signs of buried footprints and broken bone. Levi had a keen eye for details others missed; Kaan had the instincts of a predator.
"You're faster," Kaan would say during their sparring, breathing hard and grinning. "But I'm meaner."
"You're also taller," Levi would gripe, dodging a strike.
They didn't talk about the bad days—not much. Not unless they had to. But the silence between them had shifted into something almost easy. Like a shared language that didn't always need words.
On the ride back from one of their patrol loops—a long circuit near the edge of a collapsed trade route—they moved in familiar rhythm, the desert a wide-open sea of silence between them. Their camels trudged steadily along the ridge, the sun dipping low enough to cast long shadows across the dunes.
When they reached camp, everything was just as they'd left it. Smoke from the cooking fires curled into the amber sky, and the scent of spiced grain and boiled cactus root met them at the edge of the tents.
Levi's mother was laughing—really laughing—near the firepit where the healers gathered. Her hair had grown out again, pulled into a braid that glinted with copper under the sunset. She stood beside one of the older Sandwalkers, a broad-shouldered man named Rafiq who'd taken to sitting close to her most evenings. He'd lost a daughter years ago, or so the rumors went, and spoke little—but with her, he'd started speaking more. Slowly. Softly.
Levi watched them from a distance, not with jealousy but something quieter. Something that ached,that's was hurting. But…She was healing. In her own way. Finding a rhythm again. A kind of peace.
"She's smiling more," Kaan noted beside him, dismounting and pulling the reins into a lazy loop.
"Yeah," Levi said. "She's better here."
"Maybe we all are," Kaan replied, stretching his arms behind his back before letting them drop. "Come on, desert dog. Let's go get food before Joren hoards all the flatbread again."
Levi smirked and followed, boots crunching over packed sand.
The stars were beginning to show by the time they sat around the fire that night—just the two of them this time, with Sera gone and the others out on rotation. The fire crackled, casting flickers across Kaan's sharp features and Levi's watchful eyes.
They didn't say much.
They didn't need to.
The fire did the talking, the desert listened, and the boys—scarred, growing, alive—settled into a silence shaped by
belonging.
The fire had burned low, just embers now—glowing red and gold like buried coals beneath ash. Most of the camp had gone quiet, save for the soft shuffling of the night watch and the distant, rhythmic groan of wind pressing against the tent walls.
Levi and Kaan remained near the dying fire, leaning back against a half-buried slab of sandstone, legs stretched out, arms folded lazily across their chests. Neither had made a move to leave. They never really said when their conversations ended—they just ebbed and flowed like the dunes themselves.
"Admit it," Kaan said eventually, tone smug as he tossed a pebble into the coals, "you missed the ridge trail marker yesterday."
"I didn't miss it," Levi muttered, flicking a crumb of flatbread at him. "You just charged ahead like a jackal with a thorn in its ass."
"I knew exactly where I was going."
"You nearly led us off a cliff."
"I was testing your reflexes."
Levi huffed. "They must've failed, because I still haven't recovered from the heart attack."
Kaan laughed—a rare sound, rough and warm, unguarded—and leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. "Next time, I'll give you a warning. Something subtle. Like a spear to the gut."
Levi gave him a shove, but it was half-hearted. They sat there for a while longer, throwing jabs and teasing in low voices, the kind of talk that filled the cracks of their lives with something light and real. It was easy with Kaan—familiar in a way Levi hadn't known he needed.
But then… the warmth of the fire didn't reach his arm.
Levi shifted. Stiffened. His forearm itched, beneath the layers of cloth he always kept wrapped tight. A low heat pulsed there—dull, then sharp, like a coal had been pressed to his skin. He scratched at the fabric, but it didn't help. It didn't stop.
Kaan noticed the motion. His eyes narrowed slightly, just enough. "You good?"
"Yeah," Levi lied, voice quiet. "Just… nothing."
But it wasn't nothing.
The tattoo beneath the wrappings—faint, ancient, inked into him before he could walk—burned now, steady and strange. Not enough to make him cry out, but enough to unsettle him. It had never done this before. Not even when he was sick. Not even when he was scared.
He pressed his fingers to it, through the cloth, and tried to will it still.
Kaan didn't press. Just kept his gaze on him a little longer, then returned to poking at the coals with a stick.
A few minutes later, footsteps crunched through the sand behind them. Levi glanced over his shoulder to see his mother moving slowly toward the healer's tent, wrapped in her shawl, one arm curled around her middle.
She looked pale.
Kaan followed his gaze. "She all right?"
Levi frowned. "She's been tired. Sick in the mornings. Said it's just heat sickness."
But even as he said it, something in him pulled tight.
She'd been quieter lately. Moving slower. He'd seen her wince once when lifting a bucket of water. And Rafiq—he'd started hovering more. Not in a controlling way, but like someone who was worried and trying not to show it.
"She's not telling me something," Levi said under his breath.
Kaan didn't offer hollow reassurances. Just said, "You want to ask her?"
Levi shook his head. "Not yet."
The fire popped, a soft flare of sparks rising and curling into the dark.
The tattoo's heat finally began to fade, leaving behind a low throb like a heartbeat beneath his skin. Only for it to slowly come back.
Levi exhaled, slow. Something was shifting. He could feel it. Not in the wind or in the stars—but in the blood beneath his skin and the way the night suddenly felt just a little too still.
Kaan noticed Levi's jaw was still tight, his hand flexing subtly over his hidden forearm like he was trying not to claw the skin open. The quiet had stretched between them again, but this time it was edged—sharpened by something unspoken. And Levi's eyes, usually narrowed in a teasing smirk or fierce squint, looked distant. Haunted.
Kaan made a decision.
With a grunt, he stood, brushed the sand off his pants, and walked a few paces away. Levi followed his movement with a glance, not really interested—until Kaan turned sharply and lobbed a small fistful of sand right at him.
Levi flinched. "Hey!"
Kaan smirked. "You were brooding."
"I wasn't brooding."
"You were absolutely brooding." Kaan scooped up another handful and took a battle stance. "Now defend yourself, Desert Dog."
Levi narrowed his eyes. "You really want to start something right now?"
"You look like you need it."
That was all the invitation Levi needed. He sprang up, dodging a second burst of sand and charging Kaan, tackling him sideways into the dust. They both hit the ground hard, laughing through gritted teeth as they rolled across the dunes in a tangle of limbs and curses.
"You fight like a half-dead goat," Kaan grunted, trying to flip him.
"Says the idiot who just got pinned," Levi growled, grinning as he shoved Kaan's shoulder into the sand.
But Kaan twisted, using his longer legs to hook Levi's and topple him again. They scuffled, neither really trying to win—just moving, releasing energy that had nowhere else to go. Sand stuck to their sweat-slick skin. The stars wheeled above them, and the fire behind flickered low and lazy, like it knew they'd be back.
Finally, breathless, they collapsed beside each other, arms sprawled wide, grins stretching under dust and sweat.
"You good now?" Kaan asked between gulps of air.
Levi didn't answer right away. The warmth in his arm was still there—throbbing faintly beneath the wrap—but less hostile now. Less invasive. Like it had settled, soothed by motion and distraction. Or maybe by the fact that someone had pulled him back from the edge without asking what he was standing on.
He stared up at the stars, breathing slower now. "Yeah," he said at last. "I'm good."
Kaan gave a satisfied grunt and sat up, brushing himself off. "Desert Dogs don't mope."
Levi huffed a laugh. "Desert Dogs are allowed to brood."
"Nope. It's in the code."
"There's a code?"
"There is now."
Levi snorted, finally feeling the knot in his chest loosen. But in the back of his mind, something still pulsed. The tattoo. His mother. The weight of the quiet before a storm.
Still, for tonight, the wind was calm. The fire was warm. And Kaan, dusty and smug, was dragging him back to camp like nothing was wrong.
Levi let him.