On the third day of marching, as the sun—that smoldering red disk that never seemed to set—had already burned halfway across the sky, the desert began to shift.

  The fine sand, that traitorous grit that worked its way into every fold of skin and seam of cloth, gave way to darker, cracked earth, fissured like an old, forgotten cuirass left to the elements.

  Black rocks, streaked with mineral veins that glinted faintly under the coppery light, jutted from the ground in jagged, uneven teeth.

  Marc felt the change before he saw it: the air, until now dry and scorching like a furnace’s breath, thickened with a sulfurous dampness that stung his nostrils.

  The guards stiffened. Their shoulders, previously slumped with the boredom of the march, snapped straight, and their hands instinctively drifted toward their sword hilts. Even those lagging at the rear of the column closed ranks, forming a tighter block.

  Marc noted the detail: combat posture—approaching hostile or controlled territory. Here, the two were one and the same.

  Morkh finally emerged from his litter, carried by two slaves with dark circles under their eyes. The man—if he could be called that—stretched with calculated slowness, as if to show he had nothing to fear, before casting a slow, circular glance over his caravan. His gaze lingered a second too long on the Terran captives.

  Inventory, Marc understood. He’s counting his goods before delivery.

  A low, rumbling growl rolled in the distance, too rhythmic to be the wind, too deep to be an animal. Something metallic vibrated under that reddish light, something massive.

  The nomadic warriors who had escorted the caravan from the desert clustered around their leader, muttering in guttural tones. Their spears, previously carried with careless ease, now rose vertically, points angled toward the sky like antennas probing an unseen threat.

  They’re going to drop us, Marc realized. Their job ends here.

  He clenched his fists, feeling the roughness of the iron manacles that had been sawing at his wrists for three days.

  The desert had been an ordeal, but an honest one. Thirst, heat, exhaustion—enemies he knew, enemies he could fight with a legionnaire’s discipline.

  What awaited them now, that palpable tension, was something else.

  Something built. Something codified. And Marc, despite his years under the colors, knew one thing: the rules of men were always more dangerous than those of nature.

  He spat on the ground. A reddish globule of saliva—tinged with mineral dust—splattered against a flat rock with a dry ploc.

  The trail suddenly widened, skirted by a detour marked with rough cairns of stacked stones.

  The armed men, without a word, guided the caravan to the left, as if avoiding a trap. Or a cursed place. Marc narrowed his eyes. Why the detour?

  That’s when he saw them.

  The ruins.

  They stretched for a hundred meters, a field of debris frozen in eternal collapse. Towers—or what remained of them—stood like broken fingers, their skeletons of twisted metal and opaque glass pointing toward the reddish sky. Some structures seemed to have melted, their edges rounded by centuries of erosion or extreme heat, their surfaces covered in a rusted crust that still oozed in places, as if the rust itself were alive.

  Others, more massive, lay flat, crushed under their own weight, their bulging sides pierced with irregular holes that looked like impact craters. From what? Marc wondered. Shells? Meteors?

  He recognized this architecture. Not this exact form, no—but the idea behind it. Right angles. Composite materials. Modular structures designed to withstand… something. Bunkers? Silos? His legionnaire’s brain analyzed the ruins in a second: reinforced concrete. Or its local equivalent. Steel fibers. Built to last.

  Yet it had failed.

  A shiver ran down his spine. It wasn’t fear—no, Marc had known worse than ruins—but recognition. These wrecks spoke a language he understood: the language of war. And here, war had won.

  A youth with shoulders still too narrow for his studded leather armor spat toward the ruins before making a quick sign—two fingers in a V over his chest, then his forehead. Superstition, Marc noted. Or respect.

  The others averted their eyes, as if looking too long at these wrecks might contaminate them. Even the Drakos, those beasts of burden with gray scales, seemed uneasy: their nostrils flared, and their tails lashed the air with sharp cracks.

  —Korv-drel, one of the guards muttered, jerking his chin toward the ruins.

  Marc didn’t need to understand the language to catch the tone. Drel. The word came up often, laden with the same weight as fucking shit in a legionnaire’s mouth after an ambush. Something to avoid. Something tainted.

  He stepped forward. The Vektors didn’t react—too busy keeping their distance. Marc stopped at the edge of the ruin field, where the ground shifted from reddish to ashen gray, as if the earth itself had been scorched.

  He bent down, picked up a half-buried piece of metal. The contact burned his fingers—not from heat, but from reaction. The metal was light, almost spongy, but when he bent it between his fingers, it resisted before cracking with a sharp snap. Poor alloy. Or corroded to the bone.

  —Ever seen this before? he asked Julie in a low voice, not looking at her.

  She shook her head, eyes wide. —No. But… it looks like plastic. Or aluminum.

  Marc grunted. On this godforsaken planet, even the ruins looked like they came from back home. He tossed the metal scrap. It landed with a dull ting, as if it had struck a muffled bell.

  —Looks like a tank, he muttered.

  Not a modern tank. No, something older. An armored vehicle from World War II, maybe, or a troop transport from the ’60s. An M113? A BMP? Hard to say with the deformations, but the general shape—that squat hull, those half-melted tracks—evoked something mechanized. Something motorized.

  Fire.

  His stomach tightened. They fear fire here.

  He straightened abruptly, scanning the expanse of ruins. How many? How many vehicles? How many men? And most importantly—who had destroyed them?

  A crunch of footsteps sounded behind him. A warrior—older than the others, with a crescent-moon scar on his cheek—approached, hand on his sword hilt. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. His gaze was a warning: Back off.

  Marc didn’t move. Not out of defiance. Out of calculation. He wanted to see how far he could push. The man clenched his jaw. Then, with a sharp motion, he drew his blade and pointed it at the ground, inches from Marc’s foot.

  The message was clear: One more step, and I cut you.

  What the hell had happened here for even the ruins to be taboo?

  Marc took a step back. Not in submission.

  Marc scanned the debris, eyes narrowed. A furtive movement, there, between the warped plates of the burned-out vehicle. Then another. And another. Small, quick shapes slipping through the cracks in the metal. He held his breath.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  One emerged. A creature no bigger than a rat, but all carapace. Dark gray, almost black. Six articulated legs, thin and wiry, and a head topped with mandibles that clicked softly—a sharp, metallic sound, like iron being scraped.

  It climbed onto a corrugated metal sheet, immediately joined by two others. All three began to gnaw.

  The sound. That’s what hit him first. A dry, rhythmic scraping, almost like a poorly tuned drill. The kind of noise that sets your teeth on edge. He took a step forward on reflex.

  The creatures froze. Not terrified. Attentive. Their thin, copper-wire antennae waved toward him. Then, once certain he wasn’t approaching, they resumed their work. They were devouring the metal. Marc watched a sheet of metal crumble under their jaws, reduced to gray powder. Steel. Terran? Russian? He couldn’t be sure, but the soft texture of the scrap, the way it let itself be eaten… it all pointed to a weak alloy.

  He glanced at the guards, still posted near the caravan. Their weapons, their harnesses, the saddle fittings—all made of a dark, heavy metal, almost glowing red in the ambient copper light. One of the creatures crawled toward a harness strap, tested the metal with its mandibles. A brief scrape… then the metallic crab recoiled. It didn’t like this. It didn’t want that metal.

  He understood. If he’d kept a Terran metal object, these things would have devoured it in a night. Maybe even him, if he slept on it.

  Here, metal isn’t just a weapon. It’s a bulwark.

  Ka-Rosh rose on the horizon like a scab on the world’s skin. The walls climbed so high their summits vanished into the heavy copper haze, a vertical barrier of black stone veined with reddish streaks, as if the earth itself had bled before solidifying. Marc counted five: five concentric walls, each more massive than the last, all raised on a rocky spur that loomed over the desert. At their base, hundreds of tiny figures crawled like insects along a vast ramp, laden with bundles or dragging creaking carts.

  He understood instantly: no Terran wall would have stood under Earth’s gravity. Here, in this flimsy world, the impossible had become routine. The architecture was neither Roman nor Sumerian—it was an abomination of both, a fusion of their DNA: squat columns, colossal arches, elevated platforms connected by walkways so thin they would have collapsed under a man on Earth. It was granite, raw stone, assembled without visible mortar, as if the blocks had fused together.

  Then he saw the towers. Rising at regular intervals, each must have stood sixty meters or more. Smoking teeth that belched metallic vapor into the sky. At their peaks, enormous banners fluttered, their deep purple torn by the wind. They snapped with the crack of a whip—a constant reminder of power’s presence. One glance was enough for Marc: no need for signs, no need for symbols. That color meant one thing: domination.

  Closer, he made out the figures on the ramparts. Red. Red armor, pointed helmets, shields rimmed with iron.

  Warriors.

  Vektors, the nomads murmured.

  Every color of cloth, every metallic glint, seemed to draw a line of blood between those who commanded and those who served. The porphyry of the masters, the red iron of the fighters, the dull bronze of the laborers below.

  Then came the noise. A deep, unceasing pounding, like the pulse of a giant’s heart. The clatter of tools, raucous shouts, the distant roar of a beast.

  Then the smell: a dense, mineral charge. The heat rising from the stones struck him full in the face. Clung to his skin.

  Ka-Rosh wasn’t some ancient city plucked from history books. It was a machine. A fortress of stone that lived on the labor of men and the breath of a dying sun.

  As the caravan neared the wall, Marc felt the air shift. Less dry now, the wind descended in gusts from the heights, whipping up spirals of reddish dust that clung to skin, clothes, teeth. And there, clinging to the fortress’s flanks like black iron growths, he saw the cages.

  Crude structures, assembled from rough, thick metal—poorly forged, with jagged edges, gnawed by wind and weather. Each cage hung at the end of a rusted chain, twenty feet off the ground, exposed to the copper-and-blood sky. Some swayed lazily. Others stood still, as if holding their breath.

  There were no prisoners. No slaves. Only the dead. Or what passed for them.

  Emaciated bodies, stripped bare, arms bound to the bars, skin stretched taut over bone, scored by the day’s burning heat. Their faces were hollowed, lips split, eyes rolled back. Some still moved. A man to the left groaned—a raw, hopeless sound, like steam escaping. Another, farther off, weakly tapped his fingers against the metal, as if trying to drum one last message through the void.

  Marc looked up. No one was watching.

  Passersby, laborers, skirted the shadow of the Krals as if avoiding a patch of stagnant water. No dramatic detours, no nods of acknowledgment. Just a slight shift of the gaze. A habit. A rule.

  He studied the necks of the corpses. No collars. Nothing. Only a raised, half-moon scar where something had been torn away. An absence. A void.

  "Worse than slavery," he thought.

  No price. No value. No master.

  They weren’t even property anymore. These men were outside the system, beyond the chain of command, beyond the Circle.

  There was no punishment here. No discipline. Only abandonment. Forgetting in broad daylight.

  He instinctively touched his own neck. The weight of the collar was familiar now—a dull pressure, a constant reminder. The thing still burned in places, especially after long hours of marching.

  The caravan passed through the massive gates of Ka-Rosh.

  The bronze doors, thick as a man, pivoted with a deep groan, reinforced by giant hinges embedded in the rock. Marc felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. The passage was wide enough for three wagons abreast, but the towering walls, seeming to scrape the copper sky, squeezed the convoy like a giant’s fingers.

  The guards wore no helmets, only tight metal bands around their foreheads. Their clothing was deep red, a shade that didn’t fade in the sun. Metal plates covered their shoulders, forearms, shins. Their weapons, hung at their hips, were curved blades, long as swords but heavier at the tip—weapons made for slashing, not stabbing. Marc recognized them instantly as soldiers: the stance, the vigilance, the gaze that assessed each figure without lingering.

  The post commander exchanged a few words with Morkh—sharp gestures, terse replies. No papers, no ledgers. Just a handful of octagonal coins passing from hand to hand. The guards didn’t even glance at the captives. They’d seen it all before. Tired bodies, iron-marked necks, downcast eyes. Nothing unusual.

  At the entrance, the nomads halted. They wouldn’t cross the threshold. The man who had captured Marc, the nomad chief, remained mounted. His patinated leather cloak gleamed faintly in the heavy light.

  He surveyed the city as one scrutinizes a long-known enemy. Then his gaze found Marc. Just for a moment. No hatred, no triumph. Something colder—perhaps a silent acknowledgment, the kind shared by two predators crossing paths on a trail.

  Morkh counted the Sols. Piece by piece. Eight-sided metal—iron for the small, copper for the large. The chief pocketed it all without blinking. Then, with a sharp flick of his wrist, he turned his Drakos and rode toward the horizon, his warriors following.

  Marc watched the band vanish into the reddish desert haze. One world ended behind him. A heavy silence settled, quickly shattered by the city’s clamor.

  Around him, life seethed. Men in gray hammered plates on smoking anvils. Others, in dark brown, hauled carts laden with stone blocks. Vendors in deep green hawked black, steaming cakes skewered on charred sticks. And others, in pale yellow, bellowed from cramped stalls, displaying weapons, chains, tools.

  Every man wore an insignia. On the shoulder, chest, belt. Simple shapes: a hammer, a scale, a stylized sword. The metals varied. Mostly bronze, some silver. Rarely gold. And on the guards, the metal was dark, almost black—that same vivid red he’d seen on the Scarred Man’s blade.

  Marc rubbed his throbbing temple.

  Escape was no longer an option.

  The caravan delved into the city’s bowels.

  The slabs beneath Marc’s feet were black, smooth, worn by centuries of dragging steps. The air clung to the skin, thick, laden with the scent of hot metal and dust that never left the nostrils.

  The red giant loomed above, immense, copper-hued, like a furnace lid pressed upon the world. No rising, no setting—just that crushing presence, that light which didn’t burn but weighed, making each breath heavier. The shadows weren’t black. They leaned indigo, as if night itself oozed a violet stain under the sky’s pressure.

  They passed an avenue lined with towering colonnades, forty meters high, their flying buttresses defying the reduced gravity. The walls exuded stone and iron. Not just in their composition, but in their soul. In the distance, the pounding of forges resonated, deep and steady, like the heartbeat of some monstrous engine.

  Then the Agora of Chains opened before them.

  A circle of raw stone, hewn from the rock, ringed by tiers where black, rusted rings—worn by centuries of use—awaited their prey.

  Raised platforms allowed buyers to survey the merchandise from above.

  Men in bright yellow tunics paced the area, hands clasped behind their backs, eyes calculating. They didn’t speak. They weighed. They assessed. Their fingers brushed shoulders, lifted arms, inspected teeth like one evaluates a horse. No humanity in their gazes. Only criteria: muscle mass, symmetry of features, docility in the eyes.

  The future slaves were arranged with ruthless logic.

  To the west, under the direct sun, the men. Naked, hunched, shoulders slumped. Karsaks. Flesh displayed like meat on a butcher’s block. Marc found himself among them, dust clinging to his damp skin. The stench rose, acrid—sweat, urine, the salt-and-copper tang of fear. Some had empty eyes; others burned with smoldering, contained rage.

  Red-clad guards patrolled slowly, lances in hand, the metal of their weapons striated with dark veins, as if blood had dried in the grooves.

  To the east, in the shadow of black cloth awnings stretched over iron hoops, the women.

  No brutal alignment here. Separate groups, shielded from the star’s heavy gaze.

  They were touched with silk gloves, their faces turned with precise gestures, their hair lifted to examine the nape, their joints tested for flexibility. Their collars were now polished silver, sometimes set with chips of pink quartz.

  They didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Waited, motionless, like statues of precious flesh.

  A massive man in yellow, his belly glistening with perfumed oil, approached Elena. He seized her chin, turning her face as one inspects a gem.

  She didn’t lower her eyes. Not at first. A moment of resistance, a spark of the old Elena—the one who gave orders, who decided.

  Then she yielded, docile. A calculated retreat. Marc saw the shift—the Terran leader fading beneath the surface, replaced by a shadow of submission. No anger. No tears. Just that raw will, intact, crouching behind a mask.

  She was taken toward the awnings.

  Rough hands pressed Marc to the ground.

  He closed his eyes. Breathed, slow, deep.

  He was no longer a man.

  He was a lot.

  Around him, the market throbbed, alive.

  Guttural voices grating the air like a file on iron.

  ? Karsak… ?

  Silver Sols clinked, octagonal, falling into leather pouches. The scent of perfumed oil hung above the heavier stench of fear. Here, the law was not debated.

  Standing in the dust, among the human cattle, Marc waited his turn.