Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

The stranger stepped back into the gloaming of the desert and the last of the humid warmth sealed itself behind her. As she stepped over the threshold of the Old One’s ruins, those six sand-chiseled eyes watching her emerge from the shadows.

All six remained frozen in time until the wayward son emerged and they pushed past the stranger to embrace the son and brother they had lost.

Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

The ultramarine-eyed stranger closed her eyes and breathed in, whether to garner courage or in regret for making such a promise, the pilgrim couldn’t decide. Perhaps she did it to center herself. It was not his place to know these things — he didn’t want to know. But he would not refuse such a promise of assistance, one normally reserved for those in a higher strata than he, as it had been sworn.

The stranger turned on her heel and marched towards the gaping black mouth of the ramshackle remains. Six dust-scratched eyes followed her passage as she stepped from gloam to gloom, the pilgrim’s daughter whispering a prayer that was only occasionally broken by the serpent’s kiss of sand over sand.