Into the Salt Flats

The terrain was cruel. Razorstone jutted from the ground like broken teeth. The sun never seemed to rise fully here, as if the sky itself had grown tired of watching. The few trees that stood were warped things—twisted and barkless, their roots sunk deep into parched, gray soil.

Elian led from the front, eyes sharp, while Aera moved within the formation, her presence steadying the others. The squad now moved as one—no longer Echo Nine and Vanguard Six, but a single entity under a single banner. The Dawnbreakers.

When she first said the name, it had come with a cheeky grin and a proud tilt of her chin.

"Why Dawnbreakers?" Elian had asked, brow raised.

"Because we're the ones who'll bring the dawn," she answered, folding her arms, as if daring anyone to challenge it. "And because it sounds cool."

Some of the soldiers had chuckled at that. But now, as they marched through a land that felt untouched by light, the name carried a weight. They were the spark in a world fading to ash.

By the time they reached the edge of the Salt Flats of Droz, the ground had turned to cracked white crust, stretching into the horizon like a shattered mirror. Sunlight bounced off the surface in harsh glares, making it impossible to tell where the sky ended and the earth began. There was no cover here. No water. No shade. Just salt, wind, and silence.

"This is gonna suck," muttered one of the younger soldiers, sweat streaking the dust on his face.

"You can complain after we cross it," Aera replied, her voice dry with grit but still carrying that unwavering energy. She pulled a scarf up over her face, shielding her eyes with scavenged goggles.

The Salt Flats tested them more than the Hollows ever did. Not just physically, but mentally. Days blurred together. The only way to tell time was by the subtle shift in temperature—burning during the day, freezing at night.

They rationed water with brutal discipline. One sip, every few hours. Meals were dry packs that turned to paste with warm water, barely edible but necessary. Tempers flared at times—old rivalries from the original squads sparking again in the heat—but Aera defused them, not with commands, but with stories.

Around the campfires at night—small, shielded flames made from burner fuel—she spoke of her childhood in the mountain valleys before the war, of the time she fell into a river and nearly drowned, and how her brother had pulled her out. She spoke of home—not as a place, but as people. People who remembered you, even when you were gone.

Her words weren't speeches. They were memories—raw and real.

And they reminded the Dawnbreakers what they were fighting for.