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Alto's hand wouldn't stop shaking.
Blood dripped from his knuckles into the sand. Three drops. Four. The pit floor drank them fast, and the whispering started.
He yanked his hand back. Too late.
The voices clawed up from the ground, thin and crackling like old paper catching fire. He couldn't make out words yet, but he felt them—hundreds of them, maybe thousands—pressing against the inside of his skull. Arlen Kash had led men into ambushes, walked through minefields, pulled arrows out of his own gut without flinching. But this? This made his teeth grind so hard his jaw ached.
"Kid."
Shana's voice cut through the noise. She stood ten feet away, arms crossed, head tilted. The pit boss didn't miss much. Alto had learned that his first day.
"Yeah?" He kept his voice flat.
"Your hand."
"It's fine."
"Doesn't look fine." She stepped closer. Her boots crunched on the sand. Each step made the whispering spike. "Looks like you're about to pass out."
"I'm not."
"Uh-huh." Shana stopped just outside arm's reach. Smart woman. "You won seven straight. Now you look like you're gonna puke. What changed?"
Arlen forced his fingers to curl into a fist. The shaking got worse. "Nothing changed."
"Liar." She didn't say it mean. Just matter-of-fact. "You got Ashmar in you?"
His heart kicked. "They're all dead."
"That's not what I asked."
Before he could answer, someone else called out. "Shana. Governor wants the new blood checked. Medic's here."
Shana's eyes stayed on Alto for another three seconds. Then she turned. "Send her in."
Lira Tavan walked into the pit like she owned it.
She didn't, obviously. Her father had owned half the Reach before he died. Now his daughter played medic trainee, stitching up slaves and trying to prove the federation had a soul. Alto had heard the fighters talk. Some of them thought she was naive. Some thought she was spying. Most just liked that she didn't let wounds fester.
Arlen thought she was dangerous.
She carried a leather satchel and wore her dark hair tied back. No jewelry. Practical boots. She looked at Alto the way a hunter looks at tracks—cataloging, measuring, deciding.
"You're the one who beat Ironhand," she said.
"Yeah."
"Let me see your hand."
"It's fine."
"That's the second time someone's said that in the last minute." Lira set her satchel down and pulled out a waterskin and a roll of clean cloth. "I'm gonna guess it's not fine."
Shana made a noise that might've been a laugh. "Good luck, kid."
She walked off. Alto watched her go, then looked back at Lira. The voices were still whispering. Quieter now, but steady. Like a river under ice.
"I don't need help," he said.
Lira ignored him. She grabbed his wrist.
The world tilted.
Heat slammed into him first. Not pit heat. Furnace heat. The kind that bakes your lungs and makes your eyes water. Alto tried to pull back, but his body wouldn't move. He wasn't in the pit anymore.
He was standing in a village.
No. Not standing. Watching. The way you watch a memory that isn't yours.
The houses were low and flat, built from clay and desert stone. Ashmar houses. He knew that without knowing how. Families huddled in doorways. Kids clung to their mothers. An old man with white hair stood in the center of the square, holding a staff carved with symbols Alto recognized—the same symbols he'd seen on his own ribs when he looked in Shana's cracked mirror.
Soldiers ringed the village. Federation uniforms. Rifles ready.
A commander stepped forward. Tall. Broad shoulders. Helmet on, visor down.
"By order of the federation," the commander said, "this bloodline is contaminated. Elimination protocol is in effect."
The old man raised his staff. "We are Ashmar. We do not kneel."
"Then you burn."
The commander raised one hand. The soldiers opened fire.
Alto tried to scream. No sound came out. He was locked in place, forced to watch as bodies hit the ground. The kids. The mothers. The old man with the staff. Blood soaked into the sand, and the sand started whispering—thousands of voices all at once, screaming and pleading and cursing.
Then the commander turned.
The helmet came off.
Alto's heart stopped.
The face underneath wasn't a stranger's.
It was older. Grayer. Hard lines around the mouth and eyes. But he knew it. He'd seen it in portraits. In records. In the locket Lira wore under her shirt when she thought no one was looking.
General Tavan. Lira's father.
The man who signed the kill order.
The man who burned the Ashmar.
"Alto."
Lira's voice dragged him back. The village disappeared. The heat vanished. He was on his knees in the pit, sand under his palms, chest heaving. Lira crouched in front of him, one hand still on his wrist. Her face was pale.
"What the hell just happened?" she whispered.
Alto stared at her. His mouth felt like sand. His pulse hammered in his ears.
She didn't know.
She had no idea what her father did.
Or maybe she did, and this was all a game. Maybe she'd been sent to sniff out survivors. Maybe the medic act was just bait.
Arlen had trusted people before. Most of them were dead now.
"Let go," he said.
Lira's grip tightened. "You had a vision. I felt it. The sand—"
"Let. Go."
She released his wrist. Alto shoved himself to his feet. His legs shook, but he stayed upright. Lira stood too, slower. She looked at her own hand like it had betrayed her.
"You're Ashmar," she said. Not a question.
Alto didn't answer.
"I thought they were all gone."
"They are."
"Then what are you?"
The whispering rose again. Louder this time. Angrier. The sand under his boots felt warm. Too warm. He could hear individual voices now. A woman. A child. A man chanting something in a language Alto's mouth knew but Arlen's mind didn't.
Lira stepped closer. "Listen. If Shana finds out—"
"She already knows."
"Then you need to leave. Tonight. I can get you out of the camp. There's a supply caravan heading east at dawn. I know the driver. He owes me."
Arlen studied her. She looked honest. She sounded honest. But honest people didn't last long in the Reach, and the daughter of a general learned how to lie before she learned to walk.
"Why would you help me?" he asked.
"Because I'm a medic. That's what we do."
"Bullshit."
Lira flinched. Good. Let her flinch. Let her feel a fraction of what her father did.
But then she met his eyes, and her voice went quiet. Steady.
"Because six years ago, something happened in the Dust Reaches. My father was part of it. He never talked about it. Never explained. But after he came back, he wasn't the same. He drank. He had nightmares. And three months later, he put a pistol in his mouth."
She didn't look away.
"I don't know what he did out there. But I know it killed him. And if you're what I think you are, then maybe I can finally understand why."
The whispering stopped.
The silence felt worse.
Alto opened his mouth. Closed it. His hand had stopped shaking. The sand under his feet had gone cold.
Footsteps crunched behind them. Shana's voice carried across the pit. "Medic. You done?"
Lira picked up her satchel. She didn't wait for Alto's answer. But as she turned to go, she leaned in close. Her breath was warm against his ear.
"Ironhand says you gave an order. One only his commander would know."
Alto froze.
"If you really are who he thinks you are," Lira whispered, "then you should know this. My father didn't sign that kill order alone. Someone else countersigned it. Someone still alive."
She pulled back. Looked at him one more time. Then she walked toward Shana, boots kicking up little puffs of dust.
Alto stood in the center of the pit. Blood still on his knuckles. Sand still whispering. And the face of General Tavan burned into his mind, helmet off, eyes cold, giving the order to burn.
The girl who just offered to save him was the daughter of the man who killed his people.
And someone else—someone still breathing, still walking, still giving orders—had signed off on the massacre.
Arlen Kash had died once already.
He wasn't going to die again.
Not before he made them all pay.