The crystalline outcrop, a jagged tooth of pure salt against the violet sky, offered little warmth but a clear view of the shimmering plains. Rhian, leaning against its cool surface, felt the last traces of Kael’s silent tutelage in his bones. His crystalline gauntlet, now a familiar weight, pulsed with the memory of the salt he’d bent and shaped. Then, the desert changed.
A desperate tremor rippled across the vast, white expanse. Four figures burst from the heat haze, moving with a desperate, frantic energy. They were not of humankind. Their forms were lean, almost too angular, their skin a shifting mosaic of brine-darkened crystal and pale, dry salt. Elongated, faceted ears caught the fading light, reflecting it like tiny, sharp jewels.
Shard-Kin. Rhian had heard whispers of them in Kael’s cryptic tales – remnants of a shattered world, born from the raw mineral veins of Aethel. He had pictured ancient, serene beings, guardians of forgotten lore. This frantic group, with their crude bows of woven brine-fiber and blades of jagged crystal, shattered that fantasy.
They scrambled up the outcrop, their movements fluid and swift despite their panic. Noticing Rhian and Kael, their eyes—like chips of obsidian—widened, then narrowed with a stark calculation.
“Perfect,” a lead figure hissed, its voice a dry rustle of salt-grains. Its gaze flicked between the two men and the plains below. “Lure the plains-striders for us. They’ll draw its focus.”
Another, smaller Shard-Kin, clutched a brine-fiber bow. “No time for debate! Survival first.”
Conflicting murmurs rose among them. Then, the leader’s focus hardened on Rhian and Kael, ignoring the tremors that grew steadily stronger.
“Descend, plains-strider!” it commanded, leveling its crystalline blade. Its companion drew a bowstring taut, the brine-fiber groaning under the tension.
“Or be scoured from the rock.”
Rhian felt a cold knot tighten in his gut. The raw, unflinching contempt in their eyes was a shock. He had expected wariness, perhaps even fear, but not this immediate, dismissive hostility. They saw him not as a fellow inhabitant of the harsh plains, but as a tool, a disposable shield.
The ground pulsed. A low, guttural roar vibrated through the crystalline rock, carrying the taste of ancient salt and mineral dust.
Anxious glances passed between the Shard-Kin. Their desperation flared anew.
“It nears! Cast them down, now!” the leader shrieked, its faceted ears twitching wildly. “Accursed beast! It hunts us still.”
Kael, who had stood motionless through it all, radiated an unusual stillness. His face, usually a mask of stoic calm, was now carved from colder, harder stone. Rhian had seen Kael’s power, witnessed his quiet fury, but this… this was different. A deep, ancient madness rippled beneath his skin, an arctic gale of pure, unadulterated hatred.
The Shard-Kin, blind to the true danger beside them, continued to threaten Rhian. One, unable to contain its fear, released an arrow. It whirred, a shard of dark crystal, aimed for Rhian’s head.
Kael moved. A blur of movement, too swift for the eye to follow. His large hand, appearing from nowhere, snatched the arrow from the air. The crystalline shaft shattered into fine, glittering salt-dust between his fingers.
The elf-like Shard-Kin who had fired stared, obsidian eyes wide with disbelief. Before it could react, Kael’s hand shot out, grasping its face. His palm engulfed the delicate features, his thumb pressing into its temple.
A sickening, wet crack echoed across the silent plains. The Shard-Kin’s head crumpled inward like a fragile shell, brine and crystalline shards erupting from the impact. The body went limp, sliding from Kael’s grasp, leaving a dark, shimmering stain on the pure salt rock.
Bloody brine splattered across the faces of the remaining Shard-Kin, freezing them in mid-movement. Their frantic energy vanished, replaced by a horrified, utter paralysis.
Kael retrieved Glacia, his ancient blade, from where it had rested against the rock. The pale metal, usually a subtle gleam, seemed to absorb the light, drawing it into its cold depths.
“Always the same, aren’t you?” Kael’s voice, a low growl, was entirely devoid of its usual quietude. It resonated with an ancient, bone-deep weariness. “Lives measured only by their utility. You fractured this world with your grasping.”
The air around him rippled, heavy with a cold, destructive energy. The Shard-Kin recoiled, terror finally seizing them. They had never encountered such overwhelming malice, such potent, contained madness.
Another tremor, stronger this time. A colossal form crested the nearest salt dune. From head to tail, it measured a terrifying fifteen meters. A great Brine Leviathan, scales like fused salt, shimmering with a dull, mineral light. Two massive, horned ridges rose from its head, and its club-like tail bristled with jagged salt-spikes.
Every movement of its black, fused-salt scales brought a grinding ‘shrr’ sound. A faint, red aura pulsed around its immense body, a raw manifestation of its inner mineral force. This was a plains-strider, a terror of the Salt Wastes, capable of shrugging off even the most potent salt magic. Its crystalline eyes, vertically slitted, fixed on the figures atop the outcrop. For the beast, there were now more meals to be had.
Kael turned his gaze to the Leviathan, his madness now a cold, clear focus.
“How dare an insignificant monster…”
He swung Glacia, a horizontal slash that barely seemed to move, a mere whisper of motion in the thick air. Rhian felt a dizzying pressure, a sensation of the very plains tearing asunder. The Shard-Kin gasped, clutching their heads.
The colossal Leviathan, impervious to so much, seemed to freeze mid-stride. A shimmering line appeared down its massive body. Then, with a slow, agonizing groan of rending salt and bursting brine, it split. Two halves of its immense form collapsed onto the desert floor, a gash of briny mist rising from the wound.
Its formidable scales, its pulsing mineral force, its sheer, terrifying bulk – none of it had offered the slightest resistance to Glacia. The Shard-Kin stared, their obsidian eyes wider than ever, a horror born of absolute disbelief.
A Brine Leviathan was a force of nature, a monster that few human Saltbinders could even hope to face. For Kael to cleave it in two with such effortless grace… it was beyond comprehension. The Shard-Kin considered it their natural predator, an entity they could only flee. Yet, it lay butchered at the feet of a man they had scorned.
‘Who is this being?’ Rhian thought, a shiver running down his spine. Kael’s calm power, even his ruthless stoicism, was one thing. This ancient, lethal rage was another entirely.
Kael turned back to the three surviving Shard-Kin, his voice a low, chilling command.
“A den of your kind festers nearby. Its location?” He grabbed the nearest Shard-Kin by the throat. “Speak! Your settlement. Where?”
Rhian, still reeling from the Leviathan’s death, saw the sheer, unbridled murderous intent in Kael’s eyes. It was a cold, alien fire. The Shard-Kin struggled, its breath rattling, its eyes reflecting defiance.
“Urgk! Wh-why do you ask?”
“Answer me, uninvited guest!”
The Shard-Kin, even as it choked, remained silent. It sensed the deep, primal animosity in Kael, an ancient hatred that spoke of utter annihilation. It knew, instinctively, that revealing its kin’s location would doom them all.
A wet crack. Kael snapped its neck with a casual, brutal motion. He tossed the limp body aside, turning his burning gaze on the remaining two, who had collapsed onto the crystalline rock, dark stains spreading beneath them.
“Kael, wait!” Rhian shouted, finally finding his voice. He lurched forward, his own crystalline gauntlet shimmering with nascent power. “Just hold on for a moment.”
“Silence, whelp!” Kael’s fist moved with impossible speed, a blur of motion Rhian barely registered. It struck Rhian’s abdomen with the force of a battering ram. Rhian slammed backward into the hard crystalline outcrop, a gasp escaping his lungs as he doubled over, coughing a mix of briny spittle and bitter dust.
The strange breastplate Kael had given him, woven from Kael’s own essence, absorbed the worst of the impact. His ribs screamed, but did not break.
Ignoring Rhian’s plight, Kael advanced on the cowering Shard-Kin.
“Where is your village?”
“Ugh! There’s no way I would tell you…” One of them defiantly shook its head, its voice barely a whisper.
Kael’s gaze bore into them, alight with that terrifying madness. The Shard-Kin’s eyes flickered, unable to withstand the pressure. For a fleeting instant, its gaze darted towards a faint, distant shimmer on the horizon – a place where the air seemed to ripple just a little differently.
Kael’s lips curved into a grim, knowing line. He had his answer.
Glacia flashed. A clean, silent sweep. The two remaining Shard-Kin were split in half with crystalline precision, their bodies falling apart like fractured salt formations. The ground became slick with brine and viscera.
Killing all the Shard-Kin in a terrifying instant, Kael launched himself from the outcrop. A concussive boom shattered the stillness of the plains, echoing like a thunderclap. He was a streak of shadow, vanishing towards the distant shimmer revealed by the Shard-Kin’s panicked gaze.
Rhian, clutching his chest, slowly pushed himself upright. His ears rang from the sonic boom. Kael was already a distant, almost invisible speck against the receding horizon. Despite the bone-jarring impact, Kael’s strange breastplate had held. His bones remained intact, though his entire torso ached with a deep, burning pain.
He had seen Kael’s ruthlessness, known of the ancient power he wielded, but never like this. Such raw, elemental fury, such explosive, focused hatred for an entire race. It was a terrifying thing to behold.
“This ancient hatred…” Rhian muttered, gazing at the gruesome remains of the Shard-Kin. “What drives him?”
The bodies were a stark, brutal testament to Kael’s wrath. Rhian had never seen Shard-Kin before, let alone their mangled corpses. The sight churned his stomach, but a colder resolve began to solidify within him.
He suppressed a curse, then started across the plains. Night had fully claimed the sky, casting long, stark shadows. Crossing the Salt Wastes in such darkness was an act of profound folly, but Kael’s wake called to him. Rhian channeled the minerals around him, activating his Salt-stride, his feet dissolving and reforming with each step, driven by a growing, desperate need for answers.