"Three months in the desert will teach you more than ten years in the world."
The door creaked softly as I shoved it open a crack. Light spilled through the gaps, blinding and unyielding. The heat flowed into the space like a living entity, curling around my flesh and invading my breath. It wasn't merely hot — it was searing. The kind of heat that made the air wobble and the ground crack.
I squinted into the brightness.
What was out there wasn't salvation; it was sand—a vast, endless sea of it.
Limitless miles of golden sand dunes that stretched out as far as the eye could see. A sun that never faltered. A sky that taunted me with its calm.
A desert.
No wind. No shade. No end in sight.
I stepped forward, the weight of the boots sinking into the dry, powdery grains beneath my feet. I knew my body was learning, the weight of the mana naturally decreasing in my presence. The obsidian-white armor encasing me shone in the sun, collecting heat but offering protection with an unnatural beauty. My skin did not burn. Not yet.
But this was not home.
The first week was hell.
I battled dehydration before I battled monsters. I dug shallow trenches at night just to stay warm. I wrapped cloth around my mouth to keep sand out. I rationed everything.
Then they came.
The Dune Carvers. Six-legged reptiles with heat-slicked scales and serrated jaws that explode out of the sand without warning. The first nearly gutted me. Its fangs scored against my armor, but the obsidian lining saved me. I slammed it down with a sudden gravitational spike. Crushed its spine under its own weight.
Then the Blister Fiends came, stalking in packs — blind, bloated creatures that sensed body heat as intensely as sharks detect blood. I lured them into a gravity well, suspending them in mid-air like balloons before slamming them into one another.
Every day was a struggle.
Each night was a learning experience.
I adapted. That was the only choice.
My armor was second nature. I could call it up quicker, mold it round my limbs as required. Body armor in under a second. I trained in the hot sun until my limbs trembled and my eyes watered.
My mastery of gravity increased.
I did not merely cause things to fall; I made them stop. I made charging animals stop. I ripped weapons out of tight fists. I soared through the air, sending airborne foes tumbling from above.
The Solar Wyrms were the very worst of their sort. Long, dragon-like beasts, they had wings that glistened with blade-like light. They fell from the air like spears, releasing solar blasts that baked the dunes into glass. I fought one for hours—circling in the air, dodging its firebursts—before finally releasing a gravity pulse downward that shattered its spine and shook the ground beneath me.
By the second month, I was not surviving the desert.
I was mastering it.
But still the silence persisted. The solitude pressed harder than any enemy.
Sometimes, I would sit at night, gazing up at the stars. I would question whether this was real anymore—if I had died and was stuck in some cruel afterlife. In those moments, I would reach out and touch the scar on my side or the fissure in my ribs, reminding myself:
No.
This is still me.
This is still my story.
A story of ash and blood. In sand and sweat. In monsters slain and wounds endured. A story of battle.
The third month changed me.
I was faster. Stronger. Sharper. My gravity manipulation wasn't just a power — it was a language. And I was finally fluent.
I combined attacks. Shifted weight in real time. Caught a charging beast mid-lunge and twisted gravity around it, crushing its armor before it even landed. I ripped boulders from the sand, hurled them like missiles, and crushed aerial monsters between magnetic gravity fields.
Even the land obeyed me now.
I was not just a mage anymore.
I was a weapon.
And then one morning, I climbed a huge dune and saw it.
The end.
Below me, the golden sand dunes ran into a deep dark canyon. On the floor of the canyon was something special — a shining oval of silver-blue light, hovering inches from the rock. A portal. It pulsed with mana, its rhythm like a heartbeat.
It looked ancient. Otherworldly. Waiting.
I looked at it, not sure if I was just dreaming.
Three months ago, I was crawling in the sand, broken and bleeding, just hanging in there.
And now I stood at the edge of the world. Was this the exit? Or just another chapter? I didn't know. But my tale wasn't finished.