Kier hasn’t said a word in ten years.

He’s nearly forgotten this, since he’s been alone almost as long. He is old now and it shows. His mane is coarse and burnt red at the ends from time spent in the sun, and his once jet-black coat has faded to a deep seal brown. Despite his hotblood ancestry, he is thinner now than he’s ever been. Food was scarce where he came from, and he had no other choice but to start walking in the hope that elsewhere it might be more plentiful. Thus far, Kier’s luck had been abysmal.

When he reached the desert, he started hallucinating. Visions of grassy knolls and lush paradises tormented his mind as he walked slowly onward. His lips were cracked and slightly parted, and any moisture on his tongue had long since evaporated. Every now and then his legs would buckle between long breaths, and even the air itself seemed toxic—too hot to inhale without making his lungs feel like fire.

It was only when Kier began seeing ghosts he knew he was in trouble. Riot had been dead for years (or so he assumed) and yet the indistinct figure standing not one hundred feet from him looked identical to his father. It was kind of eerie to see him again, or to even think of him again. Kier had forgotten his face—he’d forgotten many faces. They all lived as fuzzy, dark shapes in his mind. He was surprised he even remembered well enough to imagine them. Blinking through the haze, he tries to focus. He could not be sure if what he was seeing was real.

With his neck outstretched toward the vision, his eyelids flutter heavily and he collapses from exhaustion in the sand.