When the cart finally stopped, I thought it would be silence. Relief. But instead, the wooden floor beneath us tilted, and without warning, it threw Leyla and me out like waste.
We hit the sand hard. Grit clawed at my scalp and filled my mouth. I spat and blinked furiously, silver hair tangling into my lashes. My knees burned from the fall, my vision still blurred by the sudden flood of sunlight.
A gentle hand touched my shoulder—Leyla.
I turned to her, but she wasn't looking at me. Her gaze was fixed somewhere else, wide and distant. I followed her eyes.
We weren't alone.
Dozens of girls… no, not girls—sacrifices—were rising unsteadily to their feet. All of them wore the same rough rags we had. The same haunted eyes. The same silent question hanging in the heat: Why us?
I couldn't explain it, but a name pressed itself into my mind, like a whisper from the wind. Drekai rags. That's what we were wearing. The fabric was coarse, stained by time and sweat, stitched with the shame of those who wore it before.
A man approached.
He wasn't dressed like a guard. No armor. No weapon. Yet, the air bent around him like even the sun dared not touch him. His skin was bronze, etched with markings like firebrands, his robe dark with golden patterns that shimmered with power.
His presence said one thing: Referee. Not of a game… but of judgment.
He moved down the line, muttering ancient words as he slapped glowing tags onto our necks and chests. I flinched when it burned against my skin.
The tags looked like crude iron plates—one at our collar, one strapped to our backs. Inscribed with symbols I couldn't read. But I saw the colors.
Black.
Brown.
Red.
The red ones were rare. Only a few girls had them… girls who were painfully beautiful.
I had one too.
When I looked down at it, my stomach sank.
I turned to Leyla. "What does it mean?"
Her lips trembled. Her hands clutched her own black tag like it would choke her. The color had drained from her face completely. I had never seen her like this.
"Leyla. What. Does. It. Mean?"
She looked up at me then, and I swear her soul had already left her body. Her voice was so small, I barely heard it. "We're not slaves, Arla. Not yet. This is a game. A hunt. They… they play it for sport."
Before I could ask more, a trumpet echoed in the distance.
Men stepped forward—royals by their dress, decadence dripping from every movement. Their silks dragged along the sand, their jewels shimmered in the sun like blood in water. They carried no weapons, but they didn't need them. Power oozed from their eyes.
Beside them, girls knelt in finer clothing—slaves, but polished. One of them giggled as she kissed a noble's belt, licking up his chest like it was the sweetest fruit. Others sucked on their masters with joy in their eyes, like they were proud to be beneath them.
It was so grotesque… so terrifying… that it stunned me silent.
Then came the snarling.
It was low at first, like the earth itself was growling. The nobles stood on a raised platform, but underneath it, something moved. Shadows shifted. Chains rattled.
And then… the eyes.
Glowing orange, flickering like fire in pitch black. More than one pair. They blinked—slow, hungry.
The snarling turned into howling. Then scratching. And then roaring.
A cage.
Something inside was being held back by force alone. Its shape—massive, muscular. I couldn't tell if it was tiger or something worse. Its mane looked like burning ash. Its tail… like a serpent's. Its fangs could've pierced armor.
They called it Ravakar, I would later learn. The desert god's pet. A creature bred only to hunt the marked.
"The game begins," the bronze man declared. "The tagged shall run."
The nobles stepped back. A guard raised a horn.
We didn't get time to think.
The gate flung open. The girls screamed. And I ran.
I didn't look back—I didn't dare. The sand was loose, the air dry and cracking, but I ran until my lungs burned and the Drekai rag stuck to my back like another curse.
The first arrow whistled past my ear. The second lodged into a girl's spine. She dropped. More screams.
Ravakar burst forward—faster than anything that size had a right to be. He tore into the girls with red tags first, like he could smell their blood.
Leyla screamed somewhere behind me.
I turned.
She had fallen. Her leg was bleeding.
"Run!" she cried.
But I ran toward her.
The desert was alive with screams.
Girls scattered like frightened birds, rags flapping, sand clawing at their ankles as monstrous snarls echoed from beneath the nobles' golden platform. The gates had burst open moments ago—gates that should never have been built. And from them poured tigers—no, things that looked like tigers but weren't. Bigger. Sleeker. Too many teeth. Too many eyes.
Leila was struck by an arrow, or maybe her legs just gave out. She lay half-buried in the sand, blood seeping into the ground, eyes wide as a beast hurtled toward her like death given form.
I didn't think. I didn't breathe. I moved.
I threw myself forward, sand whipping against my face. my foot hit something buried beneath the dune—wood? No, metal. My fingers closed around it instinctively.
The dagger. The one i saw in the cart before this nightmare began.
The beast was ten strides away. Eight. Four.
I screamed—loud and raw—and leapt.
The tiger hit me like a wall of muscle and fury, slamming me onto my back, the dagger flying from her grip. Claws raked her side. Pain bloomed. Hot. Blinding.
But i didn't stop.
She fought.
Her hand scrabbled in the sand—found the blade—and drove it into the beast's neck.
Once.
Twice.
It howled. Snarled. But she didn't let go. She stabbed again and again, until warm blood soaked her hands and the creature finally slumped, its breath hissing out in a final, wet sigh.
Silence.
For a moment, the world stopped.
Then Arla crawled to Leila, who was crying silently, pain etched into every line of her face.
"Don't die," Arla whispered, her voice ragged. "You didn't let me die. I'm not letting you."
I hoisted Leila's arm over her shoulder and dragged her toward a tree, ignoring the way her own legs buckled. She climbed—slowly, painfully—until both of them were nestled in the crook of thick branches, hidden from the worst of the chaos below.
Dead girls littered the sand. Red tags glinting in the sunlight like cursed jewels.
Above, the nobles murmured.
Then footsteps. Two men stepped forward on the platform.
One clapped. Slowly. Cruelly.
The other just watched me, his eyes were unreadable, but not unkind.
And from their gaze alone, I knew:
I had survived.
But more than that—
I had won.
Two nobles approached.
One had eyes like ice and a jaw that looked carved from stone. The other was all smirks and cruelty, licking his lips as he walked.
"She's divine," the cruel one said.
"She's dangerous," the cold one replied.
"Winner of the hunt," the referee announced. "You are now worthy to be a slave."
Slave? That was a reward?
I stepped forward. "Then let me choose what I deserve. I choose her too. I owe her my life."
They hesitated.
"She is dying," the cold one said.
"She was dead the moment she entered the sand," the cruel one smirked.
"Then so wa
s I," I snapped. "Yet I lived."
Silence.
And then… a nod.
Leyla was lifted beside me. Her blood soaked into my shoulder, warm and frightening.
She was alive. Barely.