Chapter 198: No One Warned Me About This Shit!

Sand spilled across the slopes and surged upward like a titanic wave — one that descended upon us, us who had been walking along the surface like little ants. The ground shifted beneath my feet, and suddenly there was nothing solid left to stand on.

I stumbled, arms pinwheeling. Tristan grabbed my collar before I could tumble down the slope.

“What the hell—”

“Shut up.” Levi’s voice cut through the chaos. He wasn’t looking at the sand. He was looking past it, toward the horizon, where the sky had turned the color of dried blood.

No… Not the sky.

The wall of dust. Orange-brown and massive, stretching across the entire horizon like a curtain being drawn across the world. And within that wall, something glowed. Dozens of points of dim light, like eyes.

Hundreds of them.

“Oh no,” Tristan breathed.

The sound reached us a moment later. A low, grinding roar — like wind through canyon walls, except wind didn’t make the ground tremble. Wind didn’t sound like thunder rolling toward you without end.

’What is that?’

Levi answered the question I hadn’t asked aloud.

“Duskstriders.” His face had gone pale. “A whole herd. We need to move. Now.”

“Move where?!” I looked around. Sand in every direction. There was nothing but endless red dunes and that wall of death rolling toward us.

“Anywhere that isn’t here!” Levi was already moving, sprinting up the nearest dune. “Tristan! Nisha! Summon your spirits! We have maybe ninety seconds before they’re on top of us!”

’Ninety seconds?’

The number hit me like a punch to the chest.

Tristan didn’t hesitate. He slammed his palm against the sand and light exploded outward — crackling, electric, blinding. When it faded, Stormwhite stood beneath him, the massive beast already shifting into something less solid. Lightning arced across its fur. Its cyan eyes blazed.

“Get on!” Tristan extended a hand toward Levi.

“No.” Levi shook his head. “I’ll keep up. Take Nisha if she needs—”

“I don’t.”

Nisha’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere. I spun around and found her sinking into the shadow of the sand, her body dissolving into liquid darkness like ink spilling in reverse.

“The dust cloud is darkness enough,” she said, her voice echoing strangely. “Black Shadow and I will manage. Worry about yourselves.”

Then she was gone. Just a ripple of shadow across the dune, racing toward the approaching storm.

’She’s running toward it?!’

“Kassie!” I shouted.

The air beside me ignited.

A whirlwind of sparks erupted from nothing, and Cindy exploded into existence — all crimson muscle and white-smoke mane, her molten core pulsing like a second heartbeat. Her hooves scorched the sand beneath her, leaving glass where fire met grain.

Kassie materialized a half-second later, already moving. She grabbed me by the back of my shirt and hurled me onto Cindy’s back like I weighed nothing.

“Hold tight.”

“Wait — aren’t you going to—”

She was already running.

Her legs blurred, each stride covering impossible distance, and within seconds she was keeping pace with Cindy without breaking a sweat.

’Right. Calamity-tier. Of course she can outrun a horse.’

Cindy surged forward, and I grabbed her mane with both hands, pressing myself flat against her neck. The heat coming off her was immense — not quite burning, but close. The boundary between warmth and pain.

Behind us, the grinding roar grew louder.

I risked a glance back.

The dust wall had halved the distance. Through the churning sand, I could see shapes now — lean, hunched figures sprinting through the storm like ghosts. They didn’t run on the sand. They ran through it, their lower bodies dissolving into churning dust, only their upper halves visible. Bone-white chitin. Curved horns spiraling from their heads like rams.

And they were fast.

Faster than us.

“They’re gaining!” I shouted.

“I know!” Kassie didn’t look back but added coolly, “Cindy.”

The destrier screamed — a sound like a furnace roaring to life — and her hooves ignited with brighter fire. We lurched forward, acceleration slamming me against her back.

To our right, Stormwhite blazed past in a bolt of lightning, Tristan crouched low on its back. The beast wasn’t even fully solid anymore — just a shape of crackling energy riding the wind the Duskstriders themselves had created.

’He’s using their own storm against them.’

Smart. Tristan was always smart.

But Levi—

I searched for him and found him twenty meters behind, sprinting through the sand with desperate speed. Too slow. Far too slow. The herd would reach him in seconds.

“Levi!”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he did something I had almost forgotten he could do.

He split.

One Levi became two. Two became four. Four figures running in different directions, peeling away from the original like shadows tearing free from their source.

The first clone barely made it ten steps before the herd reached him.

I watched a Duskstrider slam into the clone at full speed. Those curved horns drove through his chest and his body crumpled and vanished into the stampede like it had never existed.

The real Levi surged forward… faster now. Noticeably faster.

Another clone split off. Another sacrifice that generated another burst of speed.

’He’s… he’s killing himself to run faster.’

The clone on the left was trampled — three Duskstriders running straight through where he’d been standing, not even slowing. The clone on the right lasted longer, weaving between the charging bodies for almost five seconds before a horn caught him across the throat.

Each death fed the original. Each death bought him another few meters.

It was the most disturbing thing I’d ever seen. Levi’s face — his real face — was blank and focused as if watching copies of himself die screaming was just… routine.

’What kind of life do you have to live to get used to that?’

Cindy crested a dune, and for a moment we were airborne — the ground falling away beneath us, nothing but red sky and churning dust. I saw the full scope of the herd below.

Hundreds. Maybe more. A river of bone-white chitin and curved horns, stampeding across the desert with single-minded purpose. They weren’t hunting us. They weren’t even aware of us.

We were just obstacles. Debris in the path of a natural disaster.

The ground rushed up. Cindy’s hooves slammed into sand, and we kept running.

The dust cloud swallowed us.

Instantly, I couldn’t see anything. Sand in my eyes, my mouth, my lungs. I coughed, choked, pressed my face against Cindy’s neck and breathed through her mane. The roar was deafening now — not just the stampede, but the wind, the grinding of a thousand hooves against sand, the occasional shriek of a Duskstrider that sounded almost like triumph.

Something massive rushed past on our left. Close enough that I felt the displaced air, felt the heat of Cindy’s flames flicker in response.

’Too close. Way too close.’

“Kassie!” I screamed into the storm.

“Still here!” Her voice came from somewhere ahead. “Keep moving! Don’t stop!”

I couldn’t see her or anyone. Just Cindy’s fire cutting through the murk, a single point of red light in a world gone brown.

Then—impact.

Something clipped Cindy’s hindquarters. The destrier stumbled, screamed, nearly went down. I grabbed her mane hard enough to rip out strands, my body lifting off her back before slamming back down.

“Come on!” I shouted at her. “Come on, don’t stop, don’t—”

She found her footing and pushed forward. The fire in her chest blazed brighter, angrier, and she threw herself through the storm with renewed fury.

The Duskstrider that had hit us didn’t slow. Didn’t even notice. It was already gone, vanished into the herd, just another body in the tide.

Time stopped meaning anything. There was only the run, the heat, the sand. And the endless thunder of hooves that seemed to come from every direction at once.

And then…

Light.

We burst out of the dust cloud like we’d been spat from the mouth of something ancient and hungry. Clean air hit my lungs. Stars appeared overhead, impossibly bright after the darkness of the storm.

Cindy slowed, her breath coming in great heaving gasps, her flames flickering low. I slid off her back and collapsed onto the sand, my legs refusing to hold me.

’We made it. We actually made it.’

Kassie appeared beside me, barely winded. She looked back at the dust cloud — still rolling across the desert behind us, still filled with those dim glowing eyes — and her expression was unreadable.

Stormwhite materialized from a crack of lightning, depositing Tristan on the sand. He looked shaken. Pale. But alive.

Nisha rose from a shadow that shouldn’t have existed, her cloak settling around her like liquid night. She didn’t look shaken at all. If anything, she looked satisfied.

And Levi…

Levi walked out of the dust cloud alone.

No clones. Just him, covered in sand and sweat, his breathing ragged but controlled. He didn’t look at any of us. Just stared at the herd as it continued its endless march across the desert, already growing distant.

“How many?” Tristan asked quietly.

Levi was silent for a moment.

“Seventeen.”

He’d had to kill seventeen versions of himself, in order to outrun the Duskstriders.

No one said anything after that. But the atmosphere was heavy.

We sat in the sand and watched the Duskstriders disappear over the horizon, their grinding roar fading slowly into the night.

’This is Ashara,’ I thought. ’No one warned me about this shit!’

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