The two guards' shadows stretched across the ramp. Scott stood at full size in the open. If they turned another second sooner, they would shout, and every door in the fortress would slam before he reached one. He had seconds to vanish. He dropped to beetle-size. The world exploded outward. The ramp became a cliff of stone. Grit the size of boulders littered the slope. Scott hit the ground running on six quick strides and threw himself into a seam between two blocks. His heart slammed. Above him, boots crunched closer. A guard stopped where Scott had just stood. The man's voice rolled down like thunder. "Thought I saw someone." The second guard answered. "Heat does that. Nobody's out here." They scanned the empty sand. From the seam, Scott watched their eyes pass right over his hiding spot. At this size he was nothing. A fleck. A grain. The guards turned and walked back up the ramp. Their shadows slid off him. Scott breathed again. But he couldn't just wait. The seam ran down into the dark, deeper than he expected, following the gap between stones. He had wanted to slip through the entrance. Now the entrance stood guarded above. The crack below might be another way in. Scott pulled the small fan from his pack. At beetle-size it was huge, but he braced it and switched it on. The blades spun. He aimed the air stream down into the crack. The breeze broke and curled around hidden edges far below. Air moved where there should be solid rock. The seam opened into hollow space. A tunnel. The fortress had gaps the builders never sealed. Scott killed the fan and shoved it into his pack. He started down the crack, sliding between stone faces slick with trapped heat. The deeper he went, the hotter it got. Sweat ran inside his helmet. The artifact was close. He could feel it baking the rock around him. The crack widened into a narrow shaft. Scott dropped the last stretch and landed on a floor of worn stone. He looked up. The sliver of daylight he'd entered through was gone, swallowed by the slope above. He stood inside the fortress now, at beetle-size, in a corridor that glowed faint orange from heat he couldn't see the source of. Then a draft hit him. Not from his fan. From ahead. Something large moved in the dark of the corridor, pushing air before it with every step. The floor trembled under boots far bigger than his whole body. Scott flattened against the wall. He had made it inside. But he was tiny, lost in the belly of the fortress, and something was walking straight toward him.

Scott pressed flat against the wall. The footsteps grew louder. The floor shook under each boot. He could not see the thing coming. He only felt the air it pushed ahead of it, warm and heavy. At beetle-size, he had no weapon that mattered and no room to run. He needed to know what hunted him before it found him. He pulled the fan from his pack and braced it against the stone. Its curved frame glowed faint in the orange heat. He aimed it high, where a huge face would be, and switched it on full. The blades screamed. A hard jet of air shot into the dark. The air struck something. It broke and curled back. Scott read the shape the way he had read the fortress wall buried under sand. Two legs. A wide torso. And one arm swinging low, holding something long and jagged that split the airflow into sharp forks. A blade. Bigger than Scott's whole body many times over. The figure stopped. A boy's voice came down through the dark, cracked and tired. "Who's there? Show yourself." Scott knew that voice. He had carried the cure in a small form while this same boy ran through the sandstorm. The father's son. The one who waited in the shelter hut along the route. Wally West, blade in hand, inside the fortress. "It's me," Scott called up. His beetle-voice was a whisper, nearly lost. "Lang. Down here. By your boot." Wally froze. He crouched slow. The jagged sword dipped toward the floor, its edge crackling with pale blue light that hissed against the stone. In that light Scott finally saw the boy's face, streaked with grit, eyes hollow. "They took my dad," Wally said. "Dragged him down here after the settlement. I came to get him out." His hand shook around the grip. "I didn't know it was you. I almost swung." Scott grew. He rose from beetle to full size in one quick surge, the corridor shrinking around him. He steadied the boy's shaking arm. "Then we go together," he said. "The artifact's close. I can feel the heat of it." Wally shook his head. "Guards everywhere below. Dozens. That sword lights up the second I draw it. They'll know where I am." He looked at the humming fan still in Scott's hand. "You got small and they never saw you." Scott understood then. He had come to steal an artifact alone. Now he had a partner who could not hide, a father held somewhere deeper, and a blade that would call every guard the moment it struck. The thing in the dark had been a friend. But the friend turned a quiet theft into a rescue, and a rescue meant noise. "Put the sword away," Scott said. "We find your father first. Quiet. Then the artifact." Wally sheathed the blade. The light died. The corridor went black, and the two of them started down.

They found Wally's father in a stone cell deep below. The man sat slumped against the wall. Heavy chains bound his wrists to iron rings in the floor. Scott shrank to beetle-size and slipped through the bars. But the chains were thicker than his whole body. He pushed one link. It did not move. At this size he could hide, but he could not free a grown man. He grew back to full height, and the problem stayed the same. The locks were old and rusted shut. No key. Just iron he could not break alone. "We need to cut them," Wally whispered. His hand drifted to the sword at his back. "My blade burns through metal." "It also lights up," Scott said. "Draw it and every guard comes running." Wally's jaw tightened. His father stirred and looked up with cracked lips. He shook his head at his son, afraid. A cool voice cut through the heat. "Then don't let them see." Scott spun. A woman stood in the cell doorway, dressed in white that stayed clean in all this grit. He had never met her, but Wally let out a breath like he knew the name already. She pressed two fingers to her temple. Her eyes were pale and sharp. "I am Emma Frost," she said. "I read minds. The guards near this corridor just fell asleep standing up. I put them under. It will not last." Scott stared. "How long?" "Minutes. Fewer if that sword wakes them." She looked at Wally. "But in those minutes, they are blind to this room. Cut fast." Wally drew the Thunderfang Blade. Blue light flooded the cell. Lightning crawled along the jagged edge. The father flinched from the glare. Scott held his breath, waiting for shouts from the hall. None came. Emma stood still, fingers at her temple, holding the guards in their dreams. Wally pressed the crackling edge to the first chain. Metal screamed. Sparks sprayed across the floor. The link glowed orange, then split. He swung to the second. It parted in a burst of smoke. The father's arms dropped free. "Done," Wally said. He sheathed the blade. The light died. Emma swayed and caught the doorframe. "They are waking," she said. "All of them. And now they know exactly where that light came from." Scott helped the father to his feet. The man was weak but standing. They had him. But boots thundered in the corridor above, dozens of them, pouring down toward the cell. The quiet rescue was over. Every guard in the fortress now hunted them, and the artifact still sat somewhere deeper in the heat, unreached. "We freed your father," Scott said. "Now we have to run with him through all of them."

They burst from the fortress ramp into blinding sun. Behind them, boots pounded up the tunnel. Scott ran beside Emma and the others, the freed man leaning on his son. But Scott's legs buckled. Shrinking all day had drained him. His vision swam. He grew small and then full-size without meaning to, flickering like a dying bulb. He could not do it again. Not now. He needed rest, or he would collapse before he reached the artifact he came for. "There," Emma said. She pointed past the dunes to a low house with sturdy walls and shaded windows. A warm home built against the heat. They stumbled inside and barred the door. Scott dropped onto the cool stone floor and gasped. His whole body shook. Emma knelt beside him. In the fortress she had worn calm like armor. Now her white sleeves were gray with grit, and sweat beaded on her temple. She had spent her power keeping guards asleep, and it had cost her too. "You pushed too far," she said. "Your mind screamed it the whole way out. Rest. I will watch the door." "The artifact," Scott said. "It's still down there. The whole settlement is counting on me." He tried to shrink again. His body sparked and stayed the same size. He slumped back, useless. "You cannot steal it half-dead," Emma said. She pressed two fingers to her temple and faced the barred door. "The guards outside are searching the ramp. I will blur their thoughts. Send them the wrong way. But I can only hold a few minutes. Sleep while I do." Scott closed his eyes. He did not mean to drop off, but the dark took him fast. When he woke, the shaking was gone. His arms felt his own again. Through a crack in the shutter, the sun had sunk low. Emma sat against the wall, pale but steady. "They left," she said. "They think we fled east. You have one chance now, while the ramp is empty." Scott stood. His shrinking answered clean this time. He dropped to beetle-size and felt the old speed return. "The others?" he asked. "Safe here. The boy's father is weak but breathing." Emma's eyes met his. "Go. I will hold this house. If you are not back by full dark, we leave without the artifact." Scott slipped under the door and raced across the cooling sand. The ramp lay open, unguarded. He descended into the fortress, tiny and silent. Deep in the heat he found it at last: a stone pedestal, and above it a glowing shard that poured out furnace air. The thing keeping the whole land burning. Two guards dozed nearby, slow in the swelter. Scott climbed the pedestal at beetle-size, wrapped his small arms around the shard, and shrank it down with him. The heat died the instant he pulled it free. The air in the corridor cooled. Scott clutched the shrunken artifact and ran. No alarm rose. The guards never stirred. He burst from the ramp into evening air that already felt different, lighter, almost cool against the dunes. He reached the house as the last light faded. Emma unbarred the door. Scott grew to full height and held up the shard, now small enough to fit in his palm. "I got it," he said. The boy and his father looked up from the floor. The father smiled for the first time. Outside, a breeze moved across the sand that had not blown in months. The relentless sun no longer hammered the roof. Scott walked out and looked toward the horizon. Clouds gathered where there had been only glare. The heatwave was breaking. Far across the dunes lay the settlement, its forty people already recovering from the cure, and now they would wake to cooler mornings. Scott closed his hand around the cold shard. He had been sent to find a medicine and had ended up ending the heat itself. He was no longer just a man who could shrink. He was the one who brought the rain back. He turned to the others, and together they started the long walk home under a sky that was finally changing.