Chapter 25 – Only Three

The Cindralisk, upon realizing it had been detected, did not move immediately.

It remained crouched, its scaly skin poorly camouflaged against the gray sand, until Valerius’s killing intent became unbearable.

“Do not kill it yet,” the General ordered, his voice low and heavy with authority, making the soldiers lower their staves. “Follow it. It will deliver the heart of that tribe to us on a silver platter.”

The Cindralisk leapt backward and began to run, sliding down the slopes of the dunes with desperate agility.

The imperial troops did not fall behind; the elite horses galloped at full speed, hooves sinking into the sand as they pursued the lizard.

Lucius led the right flank with a fierce smile, his eyes locked on the prey, desperately hoping that trail would lead him to redemption before the General.

Within a few breaths, they crossed a narrow valley between two mountains of sand.

And suddenly, the wind stopped.

The Cindralisk scout stopped running.

It climbed to the top of the last dune and stopped there, looking down. Yet it no longer seemed afraid. It straightened its body fully, rising into a posture of relief.

“Looks like it gave up…” Lucius commented, stopping his horse beside Valerius while keeping his eyes fixed on the lizard, afraid of losing the trail.

“It knows there’s nowhere left to run.”

Valerius, however, pulled on the reins of his steed, making the animal neigh.

He wasn’t looking at the lizard.

His eyes were fixed at the base of the dune, where three presences were beginning to emerge.

“No, Lucius,” Valerius murmured, and for the first time that day, his hand slid to the hilt of his sword. “It didn’t give up. It reached its destination.”

Down below, guarding the entrance of a rocky fissure where hundreds of yellow Cindralisk eyes watched in panic, stood three figures.

The Sanguine Knight stepped forward, his crimson armor absorbing the sunlight in a way that seemed to drain the heat from the air itself. Beside him, The Sutured—a grotesque humanoid creature—remained motionless, its body a mass of flesh stitched together by threads.

Hovering above them, the Dragonfly Hunter beat its translucent wings at such a high frequency that the sound vibrated in the soldiers’ teeth. The giant dragonfly possessed multifaceted eyes that gleamed like jewels, monitoring every movement of the army from the sky.

The aura of the servants crashed against the Empire’s vanguard like a physical wave of pressure.

The horses, which had faced the giant serpent without hesitation, began to retreat, neighing in pure terror.

“W-what… what is that?” Lucius stammered, a chill running down his spine. “Those aren’t ordinary monsters…”

The Sanguine Knight raised his arm, pointing his massive sword toward the army of two hundred men.

“Withdraw.”

The metallic, deep voice echoed through the valley, making the ash on the ground tremble.

“This domain is under the protection of the Sovereign.”

Valerius narrowed his eyes, feeling the crushing power emanating from the trio.

But a smile spread across his scarred face.

“Sovereign?”

Valerius squinted, but there was no anger in his gaze.

His eyes shone with a feverish intensity, almost devout—like a lunatic who had finally found a masterpiece worthy of being destroyed.

To him, the overwhelming aura radiating from those three figures was not merely a warning of danger.

It was a call.

It was something so powerful, so dark, that his soul as a purifier cried out to erase it.

Below, the Cindralisks were immersed in absolute anxiety.

Their yellow eyes darted frantically between both sides. They looked at the soldiers with traumatic terror, recognizing those white armors.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Members of their tribe had encountered similar groups in the desert before and had been incinerated without mercy, leaving behind nothing but the memory of burning flesh.

But at the same time, their eyes turned toward the three defenders ahead.

They had never seen beings like these.

The aura of the Sanguine Knight, the grotesque presence of The Sutured, and the predatory buzzing of the Dragonfly Hunter made the Cindralisks tremble.

It was a different kind of fear—instinctive, as if their very DNA recognized they were facing predators that did not belong to the desert’s natural food chain.

Kaelen, positioned just behind the three monsters, was sweating cold.

His breathing was short and ragged. He had guided those three abominations back to his tribe, which was now crowded inside the darkness of the rocky fissure.

Looking back, he saw hundreds of yellow eyes glowing in panic.

The nest the soldiers had destroyed earlier—where they encountered the snake—had actually been one of their old dwellings.

The tribe had not planned an elaborate trap.

It was simply the harsh reality of the desert.

Cindralisk tribes were constantly invaded by stronger monsters, suffering losses and being forced to relocate in haste. The tribe’s Chief, in an act of desperation and cunning, had decided to move the people to a fissure near the feeding territory of the Sand Serpent, using the monster as an unwitting guardian.

This was where his tribe lived.

The soldiers provoking the snake had been an accident. They had sent a scout to monitor enemy movement, but the result had been the revelation of the lizards’ current location.

Valerius let out a short, dry laugh devoid of humor as the gleam in his eyes intensified.

“Magnificent…” he murmured, ignoring Luciu’s trembling beside him. “Such brilliant light demands proportional shadows to be tested.”

He raised his golden sword, and the sunlight seemed to converge upon the blade, creating a pillar of brilliance that blinded anyone who looked directly at it.