Marc wrenched himself from the ground in a single, violent motion—his lungs burning.

  He sucked in a brutal breath. The air was too rich, searing his throat. His temples pulsed as if injected with adrenaline. The world snapped into hyperfocus—too sharp, too bright, like a night-vision scope cranked to maximum. This wasn’t the air of war zones he knew—not the suffocating humidity of Guyana, not the dry dust of Mali. This air bit. Arid. Electric. Charged with the scent of scorched copper and ozone, like the inside of a forge after the pour.

  His nostrils flared. His body reacted before his mind: Danger. Not the stink of explosives or corpses, but something older. Mineral. As if the earth itself exhaled metal.

  He blinked. The light wasn’t solar—not the harsh white of the Sahara, not the brutal glare of Afghanistan. A diffuse, coppery glow bathed everything without a visible source. No sharp shadows. No contrast. Just that reddish tint blurring edges into indistinct shapes.

  The sky pressed down on him, as if the light had become a physical weight settling onto his skin.

  Then he saw it.

  A red star, monstrous. Ten times larger than any sun he’d known.

  It dominated the sky, staining the world with its coppery glow, the heat almost palpable.

  He shook his head, tried to move—but every step felt wrong, his body out of sync with this new world. The gravity, half what he was used to, played tricks on his senses. He stumbled, hands flailing for balance, his feet seeming to float more than walk. His movements, too broad, too powerful, threatened to topple him at any moment.

  In the distance, sounds carried to him through the dense air, which seemed to amplify every noise. Murmurs, shouts, metallic clangs rang out with unsettling clarity, as if distances were shorter than they appeared. The air, thick with metallic tang and something sickly sweet, vibrated with sound, making it almost tactile.

  Marc slowly realized every aspect of this world was alien, hostile even, to his Earth-born instincts. The star, the gravity, the sounds—all of it conspired to create a sense of wrongness, of displacement, leaving him breathless and uncertain of his next step.

  The Humvee lay twenty meters away, gutted on its side. Its wheels had been torn off—not by ballistic impact, not by explosion. Marc approached, ran a hand over the chassis. The grooves in the metal were smoothed, as if something massive had struck with such force that the steel had yielded without breaking.

  Kinetic impact. Not ballistic. Like a hammer on a sheet of steel.

  He filed the observation away. It would matter later.

  His body wasn’t responding right.

  When he raised his arm to wipe sweat from his brow, his hand moved too fast. He had to catch himself to avoid slapping his own face.

  He took a deep breath and turned, scanning the horizon.

  The rocks were monstrous.

  Not erratic boulders like Earth’s mountains, but cyclopean masses, rounded by erosion, streaked with mineral veins that glowed faintly. Some were the size of houses, perched precariously on ridges that seemed too fragile to support them. Farther out, hills rose, their slopes covered in dense, dark vegetation—not green, he noted.

  Black. Like scars on a giant’s skin.

  Above it all, that impossible sky, streaked with milky trails moving with geological slowness.

  Marc looked down at the ground.

  The dust was red.

  Not the earthy red of African deserts. A deep, almost metallic red. He scooped a handful, let it sift through his fingers. The grains were cold, slightly damp to the touch, clinging to his skin like static electricity.

  He opened his palm. A fine red dust still clung to his calluses.

  A sound.

  Not a cry. Not a growl. A scrape—like a blade being drawn slowly from its sheath.

  Marc froze.

  Instinct took over. No wind strong enough to explain that sound. No visible animal. Just… something.

  He crouched slowly, grabbed a twisted piece of metal torn from the Humvee’s wreckage. The contact was strange—the metal felt warm, almost alive, as if vibrating faintly. He gripped harder, feeling the edges bite into his palm, and rose into a fighting stance.

  Nothing.

  Just silence.

  Too perfect. No birds. No insects. Not even the distant hum of an engine. Just the rasp of his own breath and the metallic taste filling his mouth.

  Marc clenched his jaw.

  He wasn’t on Earth anymore.

  Marc scanned the horizon, eyes half-lidded against the coppery glare.

  The crash survivors lay scattered like debris after a blast. Some curled up, others stumbling in circles, their long, distorted shadows dragging across the sand. He counted them. Seven bodies visible. Four moving. Three still—probably dead or unconscious.

  Less than fifty meters away, atop a ridge, a dozen figures stood out.

  Motionless. Watchful.

  Marc didn’t move. He observed.

  Their bodies were encased in dark red, hybrid armor. The metal gleamed in places, but not like polished steel. A deeper, warmer glow. Their shoulders bore protrusions—bone or metal, hard to tell at this distance.

  But their stance didn’t lie. Not raiders. Not starving nomads. Warriors. Tight formation. Even spacing.

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  Marc had seen this kind of discipline in Mali, among the Tuareg who hadn’t forgotten the old ways. And in Afghanistan, among the mujahideen who’d grown up with rifles in their hands. Men like that didn’t fight out of anger or fear. They fought because it was their trade.

  Between them, six massive beasts waited in unsettling calm.

  Reptilian. Or something close. Long bodies, dense musculature, heads low to the ground. Their harnesses—raised saddles, prominent pommels, metal rings—clinked with every movement. A dry, rhythmic sound that carried eerily in the silence.

  His brain logged the details in a second: organized patrol. Heavy gear. Trained war beasts. No chaos. No haste.

  They weren’t here by accident.

  And they didn’t look peaceful.

  The charge was silent.

  No war cries. No howls. The warriors surged down the slope with unsettling fluidity, their massive bodies gliding over the sand as if the reduced gravity made them nearly weightless. Their armor clinked with a dull clink—metal on metal, not metal on leather.

  Marc stayed still. He watched how they moved. No rush. No disorder. A synchronized march, almost mechanical, betraying years of training. These men didn’t improvise.

  Behind him, Kowalski screamed:

  —Take cover! Fire, fire, GODDAMN IT!

  The first gunshot exploded.

  The detonation, muffled by the dense air, rolled in echo against the rock walls. Marc didn’t look at the shooter. He watched the target.

  The bullet—a standard 7.62, designed to pierce light armor—struck the lead giant’s breastplate.

  Thud.

  No ricochet. No dent. No bulge. Just a faint vibration that rippled through the iron lamellae before fading, absorbed.

  The warrior—a colossus of at least six-foot-seven—tilted his head beneath his mask. His eyes gleamed with amused defiance behind the slits. Then came the laugh.

  A deep, almost tectonic sound.

  Kowalski cursed, fingers clenched on the trigger. He didn’t understand. He kept firing. Again. Again. As if repetition could rewrite physics.

  Marc, meanwhile, studied the armor. How it absorbed impacts. The density. The color—not gray like steel, but slightly reddish, as if the ore had been steeped in the planet’s own blood.

  He looked at his own weapon. The twisted metal scrap from the Humvee. Earth steel. Designed to bend under stress, not resist.

  Useless.

  But not him.

  His bones had been forged under double gravity. His mass was still there, even if the ground no longer held it. If he struck one of these giants bare-handed—if he found the right angle, the right joint—he might just…

  The spear split the air.

  Kowalski tried to pivot, fingers locked on his M4. A terrestrial reflex. Useless here.

  The spear pierced his ballistic vest like wet paper and exited between the third and fourth ribs. It severed the pulmonary artery before burying itself in the sand, pinning the body upright.

  Kowalski gasped. His lungs drowned in his own blood. A scarlet trickle oozed from his lips—thick, almost black under the coppery light. He tried to scream. His crushed trachea only allowed a wet gurgle.

  His knees gave way.

  The warrior who’d impaled him didn’t withdraw the spear. He kicked the body aside with his foot. It collapsed, cheek pressed into the sand.

  One of the beasts approached, drawn by the scent of blood. Its nostrils flared. Its jaws opened—yellowed fangs, streaked with dried red. It seized the torso in one fluid motion.

  Ribs cracked. The sternum shattered.

  Kowalski felt nothing. He was already dead.

  Marc didn’t move.

  He observed. Not out of sadism. Out of necessity. How the warriors moved after the strike. How they communicated—brief gestures, guttural orders. How they treated the bodies: no rage, no gratuitous cruelty. Just efficiency. A job well done.

  These men weren’t savages. They were professionals. Armed. Trained.

  And he had nothing to face them with.

  Miller was the last soldier standing. On his knees, rifle trembling in his hands, eyes bloodshot. He’d seen. He’d understood. And he knew his weapon was useless.

  The warrior who approached him was different from the others. Taller, leaner, but with a lethal grace in every movement. Geometric scars, carved by knife or red-hot iron, coiled around his arms like sleeping serpents. Not battle marks. Rank marks. Among certain Tuareg tribes, Marc had seen similar scarifications—signs of initiation, passage, status.

  This man wasn’t just a warrior. He was an officer.

  Miller raised his rifle. His fingers shook on the trigger.

  The officer was on him before he could fire. A movement so fast it seemed to defy physics.

  A hand clamped onto Miller’s hair, yanking his head back. Marc heard the cervical vertebrae grind under the pressure.

  Then the blade struck.

  Not a brutal hack. A precise penetration, almost surgical. The tip pierced the base of the skull, just above the nape, where the spinal cord connects to the brain. It exited through the mouth, severing the tongue on its way out.

  Miller collapsed. His body still twitching with nerve spasms. Blood trickled down the blade—thick, syrupy.

  The officer wiped his weapon on the soldier’s vest. Then he sheathed it with a metallic clink.

  Satisfied.

  Aris didn’t die right away.

  The scientist had stayed back, hands raised, broken glasses. No weapon. Not a soldier. In his world, people didn’t die like this—not impaled by spears, not torn apart by fangs.

  A warrior approached him. Hardened leather mask, eyes gleaming with unwholesome curiosity. He said something—a guttural, incomprehensible phrase—then grabbed Aris by the collar of his lab coat.

  Marc watched the scene unfold.

  The warrior didn’t kill Aris immediately. He examined him. Palpated his shoulders, arms, hands. Studied his nails—clean, uncalloused. His skin—pale, unscarred. His belly—soft, unmuscled.

  Then he threw him to the ground with a look of disgust.

  Marc understood.

  These men were sorting. Not the living from the dead. The useful from the useless.

  Aris wasn’t useful. Too old. Too soft. Not enough meat on his bones, not enough strength in his arms.

  The warrior drew his dagger. A quick motion. Aris crumpled, throat slit, blood pooling in the sand.

  Marc still didn’t move.

  Farther off, he saw Elena. Two warriors had seized her by the arms. She struggled, scratched, bit. One of them backhanded her—a heavy blow that half-stunned her. Then they bound her with leather cord.

  And Julie. The intern. Crouched against the van’s wheel, whimpering. A warrior grabbed her by the hair, dragged her toward the mounts. She screamed. He didn’t listen.

  Marc clenched his teeth.

  He wouldn’t intervene. Not yet. Not like this. Not with a weapon worthless here.

  But he watched.

  And he learned.

  How they evaluated bodies. How they separated men from women. How they looked at Elena—her hips, her teeth, her skin. Not with desire. With calculation.

  These men weren’t raiders. They were merchants. And the crash survivors weren’t prisoners.

  They were goods.

  The nomad chief dismounted.

  Marc had spotted him from the start of the charge—the only one who hadn’t moved, the only one observing rather than acting. Dark red cape, closed helmet, upright posture. The man who gave orders.

  He approached Marc.

  His warriors stepped aside, forming a semicircle. Not to protect their chief—to watch.

  The chief stopped three meters away. He removed his helmet.

  His face was hewn from the same rock as this world. Angular features, coppery skin, deep scars tracing furrows from temple to chin. His eyes—black, no visible pupils—fixed on Marc with an intensity that wasn’t human.

  He spoke. A short, guttural phrase.

  Marc didn’t understand the words. But he understood the tone.

  A question. Or a challenge.

  He didn’t answer. Just held the gaze.

  The chief smiled. Not a friendly smile. The smile of a predator recognizing another predator.

  He gestured. Two warriors lunged at Marc.

  Marc had anticipated. He pivoted, dodged the first, blocked the second with his forearm. The impact was brutal—the man weighed at least 220 pounds, plus armor—but Marc held. His Earth-forged bones absorbed the shock. His muscles, hardened under double gravity, took the force.

  He struck.

  Not with the twisted metal—useless against that armor. With his fist. A straight jab to the solar plexus, where the plates didn’t protect.

  The warrior doubled over, winded.

  Marc didn’t stop. He seized the second man’s arm, twisted, pulled. The joint cracked. The man screamed.

  Then something heavy crashed into the back of his neck.

  He collapsed, vision blurred, blood in his mouth.

  When he opened his eyes again, the chief was leaning over him. His smile had widened.

  He spoke one word. A single word Marc didn’t understand at first. But he’d learn to recognize it soon.

  Iron.

  Not an insult. A compliment.

  They looped a rope around his neck. Dragged him toward the mounts. But they didn’t kill him.

  Marc had passed the test.

  For now.