And then, through all of it, one thought cuts straight through my mind.
Keandra.
I look for her without meaning to. Toward Oshara’s tents first. Toward the central ring. Toward the path where she should have obeyed and gone under shelter.
She is not there.
Cold hits me first. Then rage. Then fear so clean it wipes every other thought bare.
I turn so fast the warrior beside me nearly collides with my shoulder. “Where is she?”
No one answers at once, because no one knows.
That is enough.
I am already moving before anyone can try to stop me. I cross the center line of camp in long brutal strides, eyes cutting over every shadow and hide flap and scrambling figure. Maira are pulling Siran in. Young males are securing supply crates. Oshara is shouting at two girls trying to save cooking tools they should have abandoned already.
No Keandra.
I grab the nearest woman by the forearm. “Did she come in?”
The woman’s face tightens. She shakes her head once.
My whole body goes violent. Not out of control. Never that. But every choice inside me narrows to one point.
Find her.
A gust slams through camp hard enough to send sparks sideways from a half-buried fire. Tent walls snap. A loose skin lifts and tears free. The storm has reached the outer edge now. Not fully on us yet, but close enough that every breath burns with grit.
I snatch a heavy storm hide from the side of a storage rack and wrap it over one arm as I run. One of my warriors shouts after me. I do not answer. Another starts to follow.
“No.” The command snaps out of me like a blade. “Hold the camp.”
I know what they hear in that. This is personal. This is mine. Hold what I leave. I go for her.
No one argues.
The path toward the gathering ground is already half gone under moving dust and pale cutting grit. The wind comes in hardsideways bursts now, then shifts direction without warning. Grass lies flat and then whips upright again. Visibility drops with each breath.
I keep low and drive forward.
I know this land. I know the line between camp and basin. I know where the stone breaks shallow under the grass and where the low dip near the root patch can turn an ankle if hit wrong at speed. But knowledge only matters so much when the world starts disappearing around you.
The first true sweep of the glass storm hits me halfway there.
It feels like being flayed by sand and broken light.
The hide over my arm takes the worst of it on one side, but my face, neck, and hands still catch enough to cut. Tiny sharp strikes. A thousand of them. I narrow my eyes to slits and keep moving. Wind screams now, not whistles. A constant grinding howl carrying dust, pale grit, and things harder than both.
Keandra.
I roar her name once and hear nothing back. Again. Nothing.
The basin appears and disappears in pieces through the storm. Stone. Bent grass. The dark smear of abandoned baskets half buried already. One cloth wrap torn loose and racing low across the ground like a fleeing thing.
And then I see her.
Not standing.
