"So... you’re all really going to leave?"
Max stood still, arms folded, voice low.
The hall around him held quiet like a breath. Walls patched with scrap tal. Air dry with dust and rust.
The settlers stood in scattered lines, skin pale, clothes thin, their eyes distant—like they had already stepped away from this place long before their feet would.
Old Man Mark nodded once.
"Yes. We can’t stay here anymore. Every stone, every path reminds us of the past. Of the sands. Of the screams."
His words cracked, voice dry like old bark.
"It’s better we go. Far away from the Dancing Fire Region... far from what we let happen."
Max didn’t move.
"I understand. Headquarters already got my ssage. The evac ships are being prepped. You’ll have your way out."
Mark looked down. When his eyes lifted again, they shone with sothing faint.
"Thank you, Max. I an that. Truly. Even after everything—after what we did to you and your brothers—you still risked your lives to help us."
Max’s face barely shifted.
"We didn’t save everyone."
His gaze swept the room, landing on the ones too scared to et it.
"So I don’t really need your thanks."
Mark’s face pulled into a quiet, worn smile.
"You’ve got a good heart... better than most I’ve t. But don’t let that be your end. You’re smart. Smarter than anyone I know. But a good leader—"
He paused, searching the words.
"—a good leader must know when to be ruthless. When to let so burn, so others may live."
Max’s brows drew close. His voice dropped, sharper.
"Like how you sacrificed those children?"
The air snapped. Every pair of eyes in the room froze. No one moved.
Mark’s jaw tightened. The wrinkles in his face seed deeper now.
"You think I wanted that? You think I slept since knowing what i did? I did what I was taught. What I had to. I’m not a genius like you. I wasn’t born with choices. I used the knowledge I had, and I made the decision no one else would. The adult are needed to let dunehaven grow. The children doesn’t deserve a life in that place."
Max looked away, his jaw rigid, fingers curled just a little tighter.
"They didn’t deserve to die."
The silence that followed weighed heavier than anything spoken.
Mark’s voice dropped, barely more than a breath.
"They didn’t. You’re right."
Max took a step forward. His eyes didn’t leave Mark. Sothing colder crept into his tone now.
"Tell sothing."
Mark blinked.
"What?"
Max’s voice stayed calm, but sothing sharp cut through.
"How did you end up in Sandworm Valley? It makes no sense. My father’s sacrificial blast scorched this region clean—no life, no ground, just fire and silence. So how?"
His voice edged with tension.
"How did you all crawl out of that and build sothing?"
Mark didn’t speak. His mouth opened, then closed. His eyes dropped.
Max’s voice dropped lower.
"Dunehaven..."
He stared through the man now, like peeling back the skin of a lie.
"Shouldn’t even exist."
Old Man Mark let out a breath, slow and brittle. It rasped through the air like dry leaves crushed under a boot. His eyes dropped to the floor—not just from sha, but like sothing deeper kept pulling him down. Sothing buried.
"It wasn’t right after the fire,"
Each word from his mouth seed to drag its own weight.
"For a long ti, no one dared step foot in the Dancing Fire region. They called it cursed... hollowed. Your father’s flas didn’t just burn the land. They scorched mories, lted legacies. Even the na of this region vanished in smoke. But ti... ti makes fools of all of us."
Max didn’t blink. His eyes stayed sharp.
"What do you an?"
Mark lifted his head slowly. There was nothing behind his gaze. Just a void. The kind that didn’t form overnight.
"One day, a team of desperate scavengers ca back from an expedition. Said they saw life returning to the valley. Fragile... but real. No one believed them. Not at first. But they were broken people. Exiles, widows, fractured families crawling out of the wreckage of the old city. They needed land. A place to breathe."
Max’s jaw tensed, lips a thin line.
"And so you chose a graveyard?"
Mark gave a slow nod.
"It wasn’t my decision alone. A coalition of fringe leaders t—old n playing gods. They organized expeditions, sent builders, terra-forrs, and a few tech heads to survey possible safe zones. Their task was simple: find soil. Find hope."
Max’s voice dropped colder.
"Yeah... I rember that. I rember my father warning them to stay away. Said it wasn’t safe. But the military had their own saying."
Mark’s face tightened, shadows forming in the creases of his skin.
"The military... They’re the reason we ended up in Sandworm Valley. Told us it was ’secure territory.’ Assigned sectors, gave us false confidence. And when the creatures ca... when the sky turned to ash and the ground trembled..."
His words caught. His throat moved, but no sound ca out.
"They didn’t co for us. Not a single damn airship."
Max’s eyes narrowed.
"You were part of the military?"
Mark gave a dry chuckle. No humor in it.
"Once. I was a capable earth user—good enough to lead squads. My unit was tasked with escorting settlers into the valley. They picked us because we were locals... familiar with the terrain. But that didn’t save us."
Max didn’t respond. His silence said enough.
Mark went on. His voice cracked, like it was trying to hold sothing back and failing.
"We were halfway through the trek when the vibrations started. Faint at first. Then ca the roar beneath the surface—then the sky split open. The sandworms erupted like a tidal wave. Screams everywhere. My comrades died in seconds... my wife... my daughter..."
He didn’t finish. The words dried up in his throat.
Max turned his face, gaze falling to the corner of the room. The shadows there didn’t move.
After a long pause, he said,
"Why did no one report this? The military only said the region beca a danger zone. They never ntioned lives lost."
Mark’s stare went flat.
"Of course they didn’t. Why admit failure? Why stain their perfect records? We were ghosts before we even died."
Max’s voice ca out low.
"So how did you survive?"
Mark filled his lungs again, as if the mory took effort to carry.
"We shouldn’t have. After the first attack, the worms pulled back. We thought it was over. It wasn’t. Sothing bigger stirred. The Tier 6."
His hand trembled at his side.
"I’ll never forget the sound it made—like the earth was screaming."
A chill slipped down Max’s spine. His fingers curled.
"It swallowed a couple of people. But after that, sothing strange happened, It didn’t attack again. It just... stayed there. Still. Turns out one of the settlers had Nightveil Drought on them. Don’t ask how he got it. Because I don’t know, it supposed to be gone. But it worked. Put the beast to sleep. It dug into the sand and never ca back up."
Max kept his eyes locked on Mark.
"And the others... they were afraid of it?"
"Yes. The smaller ones wouldn’t co near. So we did what we had to. We built above it. I buried the Tier 6 deeper with my skill, found soil. We grew more Nightveil around it to keep it worm from waking up. That thing beca our shield... and our prison."
His voice drifted off.
Then another voice snapped through the air.
"So you used children to make sure the worm would stay fed?"
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