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“This sword doesn’t even have music,” Ryn murmured.

“It was never about the sword, Adassah. It was about my power inside the one wielding it.”

She lowered the weapon as Heva’s long whistled breaths filled her ears. Heva hopped back and forth at Ryn’s side, rolling her sword in her grip. The visor was down on Heva’s rusted metal helmet, hiding her expression. Faro looked just as bad, fidgeting with his cracked armour, taking in deep breaths and pushing them back out too fast, his cheeks pale, his sword drooping in his hand.

Liothin Karimi had equipped Burn Division Twelve with minimal supplies, including a flag his servants made from a large ivory sheet with black stitching whose Weylin letters mimicked the wood signet on Ryn’s chest. It was hoisted above their small band now, making B’rei Mira men sneer. The flag certainly wasn’t necessary, and the few weapons Liothin Karimi had supplied Ryn’s men with were barely enough for half the division.

But it was more than Burn Division Thirteen had gone to war with.

Ryn raised her flute. Shadows formed across the rolls of sand, ribbons of darkness slipping around limbs of the enemy. A dense fog hovered all the way down the line of them, swirling.

“For El,” she whispered. She blew a sharp blast over the sand, three notes of worship this time to the God Original, and the shadows perked up, all turning in her direction, their backs arched, their hollow eyes finding her. “Rebuke the fear!” Ryn shouted down the line. “Go forward!” She broke into a sprint, not waiting for the others. She still didn’t hear her division at her back after eight strides, but she rushed anyway, aiming for the biggest shadow of all wrapping around a curved blade as wide as her own head.

The large B’rei Mira warrior holding the weapon raised it, a look of mockery streaking his clean-shaven face where shadows coiled around his eyes in circular motions. Ryn smashed her sword against his, sending a high-pitched ring echoing through the air.

She expected the man’s blade to stop her—she wasn’t ready when her sword sliced clean through his curved weapon. She doubled around as the man’s dark expression warped. He swung his destroyed blade toward Ryn’s head, clinking the jagged end off her mask just as she plunged her sword into the shadows on his face—right between the eyes. The man went limp, teetering on his feet.

A beat of dead silence passed over the desert.

Ryn tore the blade back out.

Gasps and growls erupted down the line of B’rei Mira warriors as the man collapsed into a heap at her boots.

A flash of lightning lit up the dark sky, illuminating weapons being ripped from sheaths and men charging her through the rain. Spears flew in her direction—Ryn blocked the first one, but the second struck her breastplate and threw her backward into the damp sand. A rusted sword swung overhead, colliding with a curved blade, and Ryn saw Faro hacking above, giving her a chance to leap to her feet. She realized all of Burn Division Twelve was there, throwing B’rei Mira warriors to the ground where the umber sand had darkened with rainwater.

Ryn stumbled backward behind Faro and caught her breath, looking at her sword with wild eyes. It was just a sword; it wasn’t even El’s sword, but a flicker of light raced down the blade, like a stream of gushing water, glowing at the point. The whole blade burst into flame. Ryn almost shrieked and dropped it, but a breath of a song lifted from its sleek metal, and she held tight to the handle with a trembling hand. She tilted the blade back and forth, and the light followed, moving along with it.

When she lifted her gaze back to the chaos, she saw shadows. Misty creatures trying to smother Burn Division Twelve. Doing everything they could to chant, lie, steal, and destroy.

She knew El would show them no mercy.

Thirty minutes later, the B’rei Mira army was a silent, still collection of corpses, a mirror image of what Burn Division Thirteen had become. The sky had stopped spitting, and murky blue could be spotted amidst the gray. The sun overcame the clouds, breaking through in slits of light that speared over the plain.

Ryn was the only one left standing. Most of her men were crouching or flat on their backs, wheezing to catch their breath. Even Heva was on her hands and knees, looking around at the bodies in red armour. “Let’s take their weapons,” she rasped from beneath her visor, reaching for a nearby spear. “And their water.” Her braids were a matted mess over her shoulders.

“In a minute.” Faro waved her away from where he lay in the sand, his gargling pants echoing in a rhythm. “We were almost just slaughtered, for Divinities’ sake. Let me breathe first.”

There was far less rejoicing and cheering this time around, but after a minute, Yusuf burst out laughing, his loud, coarse ruckus booming over the limp division. Chuckles rose from the rest of Burn Division Twelve, and soon everyone was snickering and cackling except Ryn. The most she could muster was a shade of a smile, but it dissolved with her next breath.

She took in the unmoving B’rei Mira men in all directions, the hieroglyphs on their arm bands and pictures of a hooded cobra on their pectorals. Then she closed her eyes and breathed in the salty air, letting it back out slowly.

“How did you do that, Adassah? With your sword?” Faro propped himself up on his elbows when the chuckles died down. “Honestly, I was tempted to run for my life and take my chances with the kill order for deserting before I saw you do that.”

Ryn rolled the sword in her palm. The glow was gone now. It was back to being just a pretty art piece, quiet.

“It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that.” She licked her dry lips, tasting sand.

Faro squinted up at her against the late morning light just as Yusuf muttered, “Sounds like a bunch of religious nonsense to me.”

Heva made a sound in the back of her throat and hurled a handful of sand at him. “That religious nonsense saved your ungrateful butt, Yusuf.” Another round of chuckles followed, and others began lobbing sand at Yusuf until his smile vanished and he started growling unsavory things back at them.

Ryn pierced the ground with her sword and dropped to a knee, the weight of her armour pressing on her shoulders. She leaned against her weapon for support as her heart settled, as she accepted this was the second time in a row she’d survived. Two days in the desert now. Two days still alive.

Someone stepped in front of her, bringing in the light fragrance of mint tea-soap, and her gaze dragged up to Bastone’s mouth opening like he had something to say. But the other young soldier raced through the panting group with a small leaf of parchment in his fingers before Bastone could speak.

“We have new orders!” The young soldier’s long, pale hair was in a ponytail now, tucked messily into the black band around his head. It flapped as he scooted to a halt.

“Not now, Kiran,” Bastone tried, but the other soldier, Kiran, shoved the parchment before his eyes. Bastone’s bright gaze darted down to it and settled there. He took the paper slowly, and after a moment, he crumpled it into his fist and looked off, jaw flexing.