The desert sun beat down like a merciless forge, cooking the sand and twisting the horizon into a shimmering haze. Three thousand humans trudged across the dunes, their boots sinking with every step. Progress was slow, and the heat bled the strength out of them. At the head of the column walked Lyle and Yaral. Every so often, they stopped to survey the dunes for threats, the endless sea of yellow sand stretching in all directions. "Have your people rest here," Lyle said, pausing on the crest of a dune and scanning the horizon with narrowed eyes. Yaral frowned, gripping her silver-white spear. "This is the third rest stop already. We can keep going. My people are desert-born, this heat does not trouble us as much as you think." "There are still more than two days of marching ahead. Endurance matters more than pride," Lyle replied, his tone flat as he glanced back at the three thousand weary figures straggling in the sand. He was right, of course. Numbers looked impressive, but most of the humans were not trained soldiers. Prolonged marches in the blistering sun would break them long before steel ever did. And water was being consumed at an alarming rate. "From now on, we rest during the day and travel by night," Lyle decided. His voice carried no doubt, only calm authority. It was not a command he would have thought of earlier. Lyle had never led a marching army before, and he had overlooked countless details along the way. Yaral's steady presence had kept disaster at bay. Strangely enough, he found himself learning more about leadership every step of this journey. With her enthusiastic approval, the order was carried out. By nightfall, the company moved under the pale moonlight, and their speed improved dramatically. No blistering sun, no draining heat. The desert air was cooler, almost pleasant in comparison. For two nights they marched without incident. The wide expanse of the valley was dangerous, true, but the stronger beasts of the desert were too scattered to cross their path easily. On the third night, cold moonlight silvered the dunes. Not far away, a band of ten duergar—the grey dwarves—rested by a wooden wagon heavy with supplies. Half of them were already asleep in the sand, while the others stood watch with dull expressions and the occasional yawn. These were the survivors of a disgraced legion, sent by their Forgemaster Minister to deliver weapons as tribute to the humans. Once so proud, the duergar now looked like wilted weeds. The silence broke with a sharp cry. A blur of gold shot forward, and Yaral's spear crashed into a sentry, sending him flying like a rag doll. Before the others could shout, another fell to her strike, throat pierced clean through. But before Yaral could finish the third, flashes of steel swept through the night air. Cold light danced, and in an instant, every other duergar was cut down. Lyle stood by the wagon, his greatsword dripping with crimson. He casually flicked the blood away and grabbed one terrified survivor by the beard, lifting him like a child's doll. "Magnificent," Yaral whispered, lowering her spear and looking at him with glowing eyes. She had felled two dwarves, while her Hero had massacred the rest in the span of a breath. "Mercy, human! Do not kill me!" the duergar begged, shaking. "We came to… to parley!" "Parley?" Yaral's face hardened, silver eyes blazing with fury. "You slaughtered our people, left us with nothing but corpses in the sand, and now you dare talk of parley? If not for the Hero, we would all be bones beneath your boots!" The duergar's gray beard quivered as he turned toward Lyle, realizing with horror that this was the mysterious warrior who had crushed their army. And worse—he was human. If the duergar kingdom had been trembling before, now it had reason to collapse entirely. "We… we can help you!" the dwarf stammered. "We can forge weapons for humans, weapons only you can wield—" "Yaral," Lyle interrupted smoothly. "Check the surroundings. See if any others slipped away." "Yes, Hero," she said, though her glare at the captive made it clear she would rather put her spear through him. She hurried off, her silver eyes still gleaming. Once she was gone, Lyle's gaze hardened. His pupils glimmered with magical power as he invoked one of his abilities. The duergar's resistance crumbled instantly under the spell. "Tell me everything," Lyle ordered coldly. The dwarf spilled it all. Military losses, political shifts, even scraps of intelligence about the long-lost rune techniques of his people. The rune arts, once the pride of the duergar kingdom, had nearly vanished after the kingdom's fall fifty years ago. Only the Forgemaster Minister still retained mastery. The rest of their artisans were mere shadows of what once had been. When the flow of words finally ended, Lyle's hand tightened. With a wet crack, the duergar's neck snapped like kindling. With the small patrol wiped out, the march resumed. By the third night, the humans reached a position less than a kilometer from the duergar oasis. A shadow passed overhead. Lyle's barghest, currently in the form of an eagle, circled above the oasis and then returned to land on his shoulder, reporting its observations through silent magic. The three thousand humans crouched in the sand, eyes locked on Lyle, ready for his command. He looked over them, his expression unreadable. "Rest. Tomorrow, the true battle begins." There was no dissent. They were exhausted, and even Yaral agreed, though the tension in her voice betrayed her excitement. "Yes! Rest well, all of you!" The camp fell into a hushed anticipation, the air thick with nervous energy. Few slept easily. At dawn, Lyle stood upon a dune, surveying the oasis. It was larger than the human one by far, a lush expanse of greenery guarded by patrols of armored duergar. But the true danger lay beneath, in the endless tunnels where the grey dwarves made their homes. Yaral approached softly, her eyes on the distant settlement. "Shall I wake them, Hero?" "Not yet," Lyle said calmly. He tilted his head to the sky, watching the sun climb higher. Yaral caught on quickly, her eyes brightening. "You mean to strike at noon." "Exactly. The duergar hate the sun. Even here, surrounded by trees, they live underground. We will drag them into their least favorite battlefield." Yaral looked troubled. "Their tunnels are impossible for outsiders to navigate. If we enter, the odds of survival—" "Which is why we will not enter." Lyle smiled faintly, his hand rising. "That makes things easier, not harder." She blinked, baffled but trusting. When the sun reached its peak, the duergar aboveground patrols thinned, leaving only squads of twenty pacing the perimeter. "It begins." Lyle raised his hand, resting it briefly on the spectral hound perched at his side. The creature launched into the sky once more. "Third-Tier Spell: Composite Elemental Summoning." Magic rippled through him as his unique class ability, Elemental Conversion, activated. "Arise… Sandstorm Spirit!"