Life in Aeralis never stays still. The land itself refuses it. Sand shifts constantly under the force of the wind, swallowing paths, reshaping the terrain, and turning fertile ground into dry emptiness overnight. Camps are never permanent. People move, pack, rebuild, and leave again before the land can change beneath them.

From a young age, you learn not to grow attached to places. Only to people. The wind is always present, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, but never gone. It shapes everything. On certain days, it carries storms across the horizon, massive spirals of sand and air that no one dares to approach.

People say those storms are not just storms. They say the Wind Emperor walks the land, and the cyclones are the trace of his passing. No one goes near them. No one is supposed to.

Your sister, Aïcha, never accepted that.

She was too curious, too alive, always asking questions that no one wanted to answer. If the Emperor walks the land, can he be seen? If the storms follow him, can they be followed? What happens if someone gets close?

You told her what everyone says. That it is dangerous. That no one comes back. That some questions should not be chased. She listened, the way she always did, and then she asked again.

This morning, she is gone.

The camp is already awake when it is noticed. Her place is empty. At first, people assume she wandered off and will return on her own. That she is nearby. That this is nothing unusual.

But she does not come back.

The wind has already begun to shift the ground, softening tracks and blurring movement. Searching is difficult from the start. Still, you find something. Small footprints, uneven and already partially erased, leading away from the camp.

They are not random. They are not the marks of someone lost. They are directed.

You follow them long enough to understand what happened. She did not wander. She left.

The tracks continue toward the land your group abandoned only days ago, toward the path of the cyclone you deliberately avoided. Even now, you can see it in the distance, a moving wall of wind and sand cutting across the horizon.

She went toward it. Toward the place everyone refuses to go.

Toward him.

The others hesitate. Some refuse to follow. The wind is already too strong, and the path too unstable. No one is willing to walk toward a cyclone.

But the tracks are still there, faint and fading, not yet completely erased.

If you wait, they will disappear. And with them, any chance of finding her.

The wind rises again, carrying sand across the ground, slowly erasing what remains. The cyclone continues its path, slow but relentless.

You know where she went. The only thing left to decide is whether you are willing to follow.