The desert, it turned out, wasn't dead.
It just didn't like being looked at.
As Aero and Mica moved deeper into the Scar, the land began to shift—no longer cracked wasteland, but whispering dunes and silent valleys. The ground pulsed in rhythm. Old stone arches jutted out from the earth like the ribs of a buried god. Every few miles, they passed the remains of old roads—melted by heat or swallowed by sand.
Mica called them "ghost veins."
Aero could feel it too—ancient energy, coiled beneath the ground like muscle waiting to clench.
"You've been talking to the land again," she said on their fourth day of travel.
He blinked. "How do you know?"
"You start doing that… thing with your eyes."
"What thing?"
"The haunted prophet child look."
He snorted. "You're making that up."
"Am I?" she said, then widened her eyes dramatically, face slack with mock spiritual dread. "'The vines speak, Mica. The bones of the earth sing to me. I feel the beetle's dreams.'"
"I never said that last one."
She grinned. "Not yet."
They found the crater on the seventh day.
It wasn't marked on any map—not that either of them had one. It had been called by the Resonance, the deep thrum Aero was only beginning to understand.
The sky was a colorless smear overhead as they approached. The land dipped without warning, a vast depression in the sand like the gods had driven a fist into the earth. From the rim, it looked like a scar torn into the desert—too smooth, too deep, too deliberate.
Something had fallen here.
Or risen.
At the center stood a jagged monolith—obsidian and bone-fused, taller than ten men, buried halfway in the sand. Symbols moved across its surface like shifting shadows, unreadable but alive.
Mica crouched beside it, squinting.
"This is old," she said. "Not human-made. Not entirely."
Aero didn't answer. The Resonance was screaming.
Not in fear. Not in warning.
In memory.
He stepped forward, slowly, letting the life-force flood him.
And the visions came.
A battlefield.Ash. Smoke.A sky split in half by flame and wind.
He saw a man—or something close. White hair. Fire erupting from his spine. Eyes like suns. He was laughing as he tore open the sky, wielding a blade of molten gold.
Across from him—her.A woman cloaked in wind and blood. Her hands were bare. Her magic was alive. Her voice carried into the air like thunder spoken through sorrow.
Aero watched as they clashed. Not as enemies.As siblings.
The earth died between them.
And in that crater—the one he now stood in—they both fell.
He gasped, stumbling back.
The visions faded. Mica caught him by the shoulder.
"You okay?"
"I… I saw…"
He couldn't finish. The feeling was too big. Too old.
Something had happened here. A war forgotten by time. And life—the Resonance itself—had not healed from it.
"Someone's watching us," Mica said suddenly.
Aero turned. "You sure?"
She nodded, her voice low. "Since sunrise. Two clicks behind. Quiet. Too quiet."
Aero knelt, pressed his palm to the ground.
The heartbeat of the desert opened beneath him—webs of vibration, movement, life. He filtered through them like water through roots.
Then—he found it.
Not one. Three. Fast. Coordinated. Closing in from three sides.
"Surround pattern," he murmured. "Military."
Mica smiled grimly. "Finally. I was getting bored."
They hit at dusk.
Three figures in sand-veils and bone-wrapped armor dropped from the cliffs like shadows—silent, efficient, brutal. Not slavers. Not bandits.
Hunters.
The first one lunged at Aero with a curved knife glowing faintly blue. A poison enchantment. Aero ducked, rolled, then raised his hand—and roots exploded from the sand, snatching the attacker midair and slamming him spine-first into the crater wall.
Mica moved like the storm she was born from. She danced through the second attacker's spear strikes, laughing as her feet barely touched the ground. Wind curled around her fingers like blades.
"Nice stance!" she shouted. "Who taught you? A corpse?!"
She broke his wrist with a spinning kick, then dropped him with a blast of air to the solar plexus.
The third hunter—taller than the others, wrapped in plated robes—ignored her entirely.
He walked straight toward Aero.
And when Aero raised his hand to summon the Resonance—
Nothing happened.
The pulse vanished.
The land went silent.
He staggered back. "No. No no no—"
The man raised a staff covered in black sigils. "You do not command the earth here, exile."
Aero fell to one knee, the silence crashing into his skull like a bell toll.
Mica shouted something—he couldn't hear it. The wind had stopped. Even her storm had vanished.
The staff was draining the land.
"Who are you?!" Aero gasped.
The man tilted his head. "I am a Whisper."
"What does that mean?"
"It means…" He raised the staff. "Your death will be forgotten by morning."
He struck the ground—
But Aero moved first.
No longer listening for the Resonance—he screamed into it.
And something deeper answered.
Not life. Not magic. Something older.
A memory buried in the earth.
The monolith behind them sang.
A blinding shockwave blasted outward—roots surged, sand ignited, the crater walls groaned.
The man's staff shattered.
Aero rose, trembling, eyes glowing green-gold.
"I don't die," he whispered. "Not here. Not anymore."
The Whisper staggered back. "What are you?"
Aero didn't answer.
Because for the first time, he didn't know either.
When the fight ended, the Whisper fled. The other two were unconscious or broken.
Mica whistled as she wiped blood from her chin.
"Well, damn," she said, grinning. "Now we're in a story."
Aero stood over the monolith, breathing hard. The sand around his feet still pulsed.
He had tapped into something real.
Something terrifying.
Something that didn't belong to any kingdom, any spell, or any book.
Life. Not as a gift. Not as a tool.As a weapon.