The desert didn't care if you lived or died.
Silas learned that when he was sixteen - a green guard with a secondhand blade and no scars yet. His first caravan job was simple: haul iron plates from the outpost at Mongrel to a trader in Heft. Forty days' walk, counting good weather and no raiders. Forty days across broken hills, black dust, and red suns that cooked your blood inside your bones.