The air outside the tavern felt different.
Cooler, but heavier. Like the city had exhaled while he wasn't looking.
Shin'en adjusted the strap of his pouch and stepped into the narrow street. The wind carried the smell of burnt resin and spoiled fruit. He didn't look back. There was nothing worth looking back to.
He moved through the crowd with practiced ease — half-step left, half-step right, never brushing anyone's shoulder. The market stretched along the ribs of the ancient carcass, half-shadowed, half-lit by torches that smoked black.
Vendors barked dull offers. Dried meat. Old tools. Arrowheads that might survive one shot, if luck felt generous.
He stopped at a stall run by a woman whose hands looked like cracked stone.
"Fletched or bare?" she asked, eyes not leaving the dust on her counter.
"Fletched," he said. "Something that won't explode in my face when I pull."
She grunted, opened a crate, and handed him a bundle tied with a strip of leather.
He checked one, tested the shaft. Not perfect. But not useless either.
"How many?"
"Enough."
She raised a brow. "Enough doesn't fit on scales."
He tossed her a small crystal from his pouch — dull gray, barely pulsing.
She caught it, weighed it in her palm, and nodded. "Enough."
He turned and kept walking. Water. Rations. A new wrap for his arm. That was all.
By the time he reached the city's northern edge, the sun had already begun to fall into the bones, painting them in red and gold.
It looked almost beautiful — if you ignored what it really was.
He paused just before leaving, glancing once over the crooked skyline.
"You'd think after all this time, it'd start to look alive again," he muttered.
It didn't.
---
The desert swallowed him within the hour.
The noise of the city faded first. Then the smell. Then the feeling that he wasn't being watched — though he didn't quite believe that part.
The dunes stretched in all directions, ridged like old scars. The wind hissed softly, carrying tiny blades of sand that stung when they hit bare skin. His cloak fluttered weakly behind him, dragging a faint trail along the dust.
He walked until thought started to blur into rhythm — one step, one breath, one ache.
Then he saw it.
Movement.
Far ahead, near a cluster of black rocks half-buried in the sand.
He crouched low, eyes narrowing. Four men. Mercenaries, maybe. The kind that hunted for cores and bragged about it until something ate them.
They were surrounding a beast. Small — compared to the one from before — but still armored in mottled hide, bleeding from half a dozen cuts.
It limped, snarling, tail thrashing weakly.
He watched them circle, shouting orders between themselves.
Their movements were sloppy.
Tired. Overconfident.
He'd seen this dance before.
"Let me guess," he murmured. "They'll finish it, skin it, argue over the core, then—"
The sand erupted.
Three more of the creatures burst from the rocks — same kind, larger, faster.
The air filled with screams and sand and blood in the same heartbeat.
Blades flashed. One man went down before he even turned. Another tried to run. Didn't get far.
Shin'en didn't move.
He just watched. Silent. Detached.
Steel clanged against bone. Someone shouted for help that wouldn't come. One of the beasts tore through a man's leg like it was paper, another crushed a skull beneath its claw.
A short-lived victory for the desert.
When it was over, nothing moved but the wind.
Four corpses. Four mistakes.
Seven, if you counted the beasts.
Shin'en exhaled slowly, shifted the weight of his pack.
"Efficient negotiation," he said under his breath. "Everyone got what they wanted."
He stepped around the carnage, careful not to touch the blood pooling in the sand.
The sun was sinking again, the heat softening into something almost kind.
He didn't look back.
The wind carried the faint echo of something — not a voice, not quite.
More like a pulse, deep beneath the ground.
He ignored it.
At least for now.
And kept walking north.
***
The desert stretched endlessly — silent, merciless, and alive in its stillness.
Under the last breaths of twilight, the sand took on the color of scorched iron.
Every step Shin'en made sent up a small puff of dust that settled instantly, swallowed by the sleeping sea of dunes.
He had been walking for hours.
Above him, the sky had bled itself dry of color, leaving only sharp, cold points of light suspended in an endless void.
Out here, even the stars seemed too clear — too aware.
He stopped for a moment to listen.
Nothing.
Not a whisper. Not a cry.
Just silence — heavy, patient, like something waiting for him to stop moving.
He knew what that meant.
Night was coming.
And with it came the real monsters.
Not the beasts.
Not the scavengers.
The other kind.
Shin'en pulled his cloak tighter and searched for cover.
The dunes gave little shelter, but sometimes luck enjoyed cruel humor.
After a few minutes, he found a shallow gap between two slabs of black stone.
A narrow crevice, deep enough to hide a small fire — if he was foolish enough to light one.
He slipped inside, lowered his pack against the wall, and sat down slowly.
His legs ached, his ribs throbbed where the creature's horn had grazed him earlier.
He unlaced his boots and let out a long breath.
The cold was setting in already, seeping through sweat-dried cloth to bite the skin underneath.
For a while, he just sat there, eyes half-closed, listening to the faint hum of the desert.
Shadows moved at the edge of his vision — shapes without names.
He decided not to name them. Naming things made them real.
He drank a mouthful of warm, stale water.
Then he took the core from his pouch.
The little gem pulsed faintly — a heart of pale blue light wrapped in translucent crystal.
It had felt alive when he took it.
Now, it didn't.
The light dimmed as he turned it in his hand.
The veins of gold running through it went dark.
Then cracks began to spread across the surface — thin at first, then deep.
The core didn't break.
It crumbled.
A soft hiss. A sigh of dust.
And it was gone — nothing left but fine powder slipping through his fingers.
"…Huh," Shin'en muttered, voice rough.
"Guess that's new."
The exhaustion that hit him wasn't normal.
It wasn't the ache of bone or muscle.
It was deeper — a pull, heavy and strange, like invisible fingers pressing gently against the back of his eyes.
He tried to fight it.
Failed.
The world around him blurred.
His heartbeat slowed.
And then — nothing.
---
At first, he thought he was dreaming of fog.
Then the fog became a mountain.
A vast, ink-black shape rising from the void — too tall, too precise to be natural.
The sky above wasn't sky at all, but a still, endless night without stars or horizon.
Shin'en walked without walking.
No sound. No air. No sense of distance.
Only cold — clean and sharp as glass — clinging to his skin.
At the summit stood a tower.
Narrow. Twisting. Black stone that seemed to breathe.
Its walls pulsed faintly, veins of silver light moving like liquid through the dark.
He reached out.
The door was metal, freezing to the touch.
It opened soundlessly.
Inside — nothing.
Just darkness.
And two eyes.
Silver. Immense. Floating in the void.
They didn't glow. They watched.
His breath caught. His body froze.
Then came the voice.
Soft. Melodic.
It slid into his mind like silk — or smoke.
> "Who are you?"
He tried to answer.
No sound came out.
His throat was locked.
The air refused to move.
The eyes drew closer — curious, unhurried.
A pale shimmer rippled through them.
Something looked into him.
Not at his face.
Not at his body.
At him.
The ground vanished.
---
He woke with a violent start, hand already gripping his weapon.
The night was still there — silent, absolute.
No wind. No sound.
Just the desert breathing around him.
The fire he hadn't lit was cold.
His skin was damp.
His fingers trembled, slightly.
Nothing had changed…
Except everything.
The stars above seemed closer now, sharper — like shards of frozen glass.
And among them, one star gleamed brighter than the rest.
Silver.
Unblinking.
Watching him.
Exactly like in the dream.