Whispers moved faster than bullets.
By the second morning after the ambush, stories of the massacre at Devil's Spine had reached even the rat dens of Tijuana and the opium houses of Santa Fe. Silas Creed's name was back in the air, but this time, it was drowned out by another:
Reyes Navarro.
Meanwhile, in the shattered valleys south of the Spine, the Ash Vultures celebrated. They feasted on stolen rations and drank whiskey from shattered crates. But Reyes remained distant—his gaze locked on the horizon as if waiting for the sun itself to bleed.
That night, under the flickering light of a dying campfire, a figure stepped into the Vultures' canyon hideout. He wore the garb of the Iron Spurs, but his face was drawn with guilt.
His name was Micah Black—once a tracker, now a man tormented by memories of slaughtered innocents. He came not to fight, but to warn.
"Creed's sending them. The Spurs. All of them."
Reyes didn't blink. He simply nodded, then scribbled something in code on a piece of linen and handed it to one of his riders.
"Take this south. Find Alvarez. Tell him the Vultures are ready."
The name Alvarez carried weight—leader of a brutal Colombian cartel with ties to Reyes. A debt long owed would now be paid in bodies.
Three days later, Alvarez's men began crossing the border. They didn't come quietly. Explosions echoed in the mountains. Entire villages vanished under smoke. Meanwhile, Creed's estate turned into a fortress. Foreign tongues echoed in the halls—French. Men from Marseille arrived, carrying rifles with ivory inlays and riding warhorses bred for European battlefields.
The desert was no longer dry.
It was soaked in the scent of war.
And in the middle of it all, Reyes began to prepare.
He didn't just want blood.
He wanted history to remember the Ash Vultures not as criminals—but as revolutionaries who turned the bones of an empire into a monument.