The sun blazed mercilessly above the Summer Expanse, casting ripples of heat across the endless dunes. Frost shielded his eyes as he crested a sand-swept ridge, his breath labored, sweat soaking through his tunic. Beside him, Rant moved with rigid precision, his greatsword slung across his back, its metal too hot to touch for long.
The desert stretched in every direction, a living ocean of gold and heat. Mirages danced on the horizon—oases that vanished as quickly as they appeared. But the air was wrong. Heavy. Tense.
"They're close," Frost said, his voice dry and cracked.
Rant pointed ahead, toward a formation of crumbled sandstone spires. The earth around them was cracked and blackened, like something had scorched it from below.
Then the sand shifted—and the Summer Mystic rose from the earth.
It was colossal. A serpent of glistening obsidian scales and molten gold eyes. Its body shimmered with desert heat, coiled like a storm waiting to strike. Rings of fire danced down its length, spiraling with every breath.
Rant stepped forward. "No hesitation."
Frost summoned a wall of ice beneath their feet, forcing the sand to cool and give them ground. As Rant charged, sword blazing with runes, Frost launched shards of ice in a wide arc, forcing the serpent to recoil.
The Mystic retaliated in a burst of flame, the heatwave flattening nearby dunes. Rant gritted his teeth, leapt off a frozen platform Frost had created mid-air, and slammed his blade into the creature's side. Sparks flew—then flame engulfed him.
"RANT!" Frost cried, diving forward with a frigid wave to extinguish the fire.
From the inferno, Rant staggered out—burned, coughing, but alive.
Then it happened.
A hum. Not from the Mystic, but from the sands.
A low vibration, like a heartbeat.
From beneath the dunes, a figure rose.
Not walked. Rose.
Clad in a sun-worn brown robe, flame-like patterns etched across the sleeves, golden cuffs gleaming at his wrists, and around his neck—a pendant shaped like a sunburst, glowing faintly. His presence was quiet. But the Mystic froze.
Its eyes met his.
And it fled.
Without a sound, the Mystic vanished into the sands, the ground sealing over behind it. The man stood still, as if holding back a tide with nothing but willpower.
Then, he collapsed.
Frost was the first to move. He knelt beside the stranger, checking his pulse. "Alive."
Rant stared, still panting. "Who is he?"
The man's cuffs shimmered faintly, arcane runes swirling across their surface like living ink.
"He's not ordinary," Frost said. "The Mystic... it feared him."
They built a temporary shelter beneath one of the remaining stone arches, dragging the man to shade. Frost poured water into a cracked clay bowl, trickling a few drops onto the man's lips.
Hours passed before the rest of the group arrived.
Rylan, Blaze, Grace, Riley, Joy, and James came cresting over the dune, eyes wide as they spotted the stranger. Their Soulbound beasts growled low, uneasy.
"What happened?" Rylan asked, dropping to one knee beside Frost.
Frost gestured to the collapsed man. "He walked into the fight. The Mystic backed down. Didn't even attack. Just… vanished."
Blaze examined the golden cuffs. "These markings—protective glyphs. Old ones."
Riley brushed sand off the pendant. "This is a ward. But against what?"
Grace narrowed her eyes. "Not what. Who."
Joy pulled a scroll from her satchel—old, brittle, stained with soot. "In the Spring ruins, I found something. It spoke of a forgotten order—the Sunbound. They were guardians of the balance between the elemental realms. And of the Vessel."
James asked, "The same Vessel you mentioned before? Tied to the petals?"
Joy nodded. "Yes. They were created to maintain the equilibrium of the world. The Vessel was said to hold both harmony and destruction."
"And what does that have to do with him?" Blaze asked, nodding toward the unconscious man.
"Everything," Joy replied. "Because the Vessel is awakening. And he might be the key."
The sun dipped behind the dunes, casting long shadows across the expanse. As night fell, the air cooled—but unease grew. They kept a fire going. No one wanted to sleep.
Grace sat beside Rylan as he stared into the flames, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.
"You look like you haven't blinked in hours," she said gently, handing him a cup of duskberry brew.
He took it but didn't drink. "He just walked into a fight and scared off a Mystic. Without lifting a finger."
Grace nodded. "Which means either he's powerful—or what's waking up is far worse."
Rylan looked at her. "What if we've already lost control of this mission?"
"We never had control," she said, half-smiling. "But we have each other. That's the only constant."
He gave a small nod. "It's not enough."
"Then we fight smarter. We stay together."
The fire popped between them. Rylan looked back at the stranger.
"He might be the beginning of something we're not ready for."
Before Grace could respond, the man stirred.
Everyone gathered quickly.
The stranger sat up slowly, blinking as though waking from centuries of sleep. His eyes glowed faintly white before returning to a deep bronze. His voice was hoarse, ancient. "Where… am I?"
"You're safe," Rylan said. "Who are you?"
The man looked down at his cuffs, then at the group. "My name is Solen. I was the last of the Sunbound Order."
Silence.
"That's not possible," James whispered. "The Sunbound died out a hundred years ago."
"They died," Solen said, "because the Vessel vanished. And with it, the balance we were sworn to protect."
Joy knelt beside him, unrolling her scroll. "The Vessel… is it the boy?"
Solen's eyes darkened. "Not just a boy. He is the seal. The balance. If he wakes before all petals are restored, the boundaries will fall. The Mystics will turn feral. And he… will become something unstoppable."
"What do we do?" Riley asked.
Solen looked to Rylan. "You finish the mission. Find the final petal. Restore the seals. Before it's too late."
Rylan's voice was quiet. "And if we fail?"
Solen didn't hesitate. "Then the world burns from within."
Far away, under the crystal dome of the academy's infirmary, the comatose boy lay still. The sigils on his skin flared faintly red, then gold.
Then black.
From the woods outside, a figure approached the academy walls. No wards stopped them.
They stepped through shadows and laid a single object on the window ledge—a black petal, pulsing with void energy.
A whisper followed:"The seal is breaking."