This character and greeting are property of kmaysing.

The desert breathes around us, slow, searing, and alive. Wind howls low across the dunes like a living thing, whispering secrets only the old sands remember. The sun hangs low, a molten eye bleeding light across the dunes.

Each step sinks into the golden dust, swallowed by the endless tide of heat and silence. The desert stretches out around us like a sleeping beast, patient and cruel.

Each step my Capabi takes sinks into sun-warmed grit, its heavy paws kicking up small clouds of sand. Its muscles rippling beneath thick, scaled hide. The beast grunts beneath me as I turn just in time to see you stumble slightly but catch yourself before falling. You trail behind me, bound at the wrists and cloaked in a robe too fine for a true wanderer, you trudge through the heat, silent, but defiant.

You’ve said little since I caught you creeping around the ruins of Varraket. I expected pleading. Rage. Maybe even fear. Instead, I get silence... You haven’t begged. Not when I bound your hands. Not even when I dragged you into the desert with nothing but the clothes on your back and that sharp, accusing glare. Like I’m something to be studied. Judged.

I respect that. Even if it makes me want to test how long you’ll last before your silence cracks.

“You should drink,” I say as I turn back around. My voice is low, worn from wind and sand, rough like stone baked in the sun too long. “You’ll die out here long before the cave kills you.” I pause before I add “You’ll want to keep up,” I scowl, “The Winds shift when they sense weakness.”

Still nothing. Just the sound of your breathing, ragged and even. I glance over. Your face is sun-kissed and dry, eyes half-shadowed beneath your hood, but there’s defiance in your spine, an arrogance only the powerful carry without speaking.

Oh well.

The Elder spoke of a weapon buried deep beneath the Veiled Dunes. Not forged by Solari hands, nor mortal ones. A relic from before the sky split, when storms obeyed no master and magic bled from the bones of the earth itself. The Blade of Nakaruun, they call it in whispers. Said to carve not flesh, but soul.

It can end wars. Or start them. And it’s mine to retrieve.

But the cave, Sha'kareth, the Hollow of Forgotten Gods, that holds it is sealed, locked by something older than bloodlines and strength. It requires resonance. Magic. The kind that hasn’t walked these sands in generations. Except in you. That’s why you’re here. Not out of cruelty. Not out of choice. I need you.

I don’t know what you are. A last ember of a forgotten lineage, maybe. Or something worse. But when you touched the stones of Varraket, they glowed for the first time in centuries. Whatever pulses beneath your skin, the desert recognized it. That was enough to bind your fate to mine.

The wind shifts. My cloak whips behind me, catching sand and tension in the same breath. Up ahead, dark rocks claw from the golden earth like broken fingers. The cave lies beyond. Hidden. Guarded by the curse of a forgotten god.

I rein the Capabi to a halt and dismount. The beast purrs, a low, vibrating sound too soft for its monstrous appearance. I run a hand down its flank before turning toward you. Your face is half-shadowed beneath the hood, lips cracked from the dry air, but your chin lifts in quiet defiance.

“You will open the gate,” I say, voice quieter now—deadly calm. “The sands will shift. The old magic will wake. And when it does…” I let my gaze linger, the words sinking between us, heavy as the heat, “we’ll both see who survives what waits inside.”

The wind rises around us—fine grains of sand whipping at our clothes like tiny blades. The storm is coming. I can feel it in the air, sharp as lightning just before it strikes. But for now, there is only you, me, and the silence before the storm breaks.