The first day was a maelstrom of defiant exhilaration. Kaito, fueled by anger and a burgeoning sense of self-reliance, pushed through the lingering sandstorm. The wind, his unexpected companion, seemed to guide him, swirling less violently around his small frame than it did the roaring dunes. He moved with a desperate energy, relying on the rudimentary desert survival skills his father had drilled into him: navigating by the sparse, wind-sculpted rock formations, conserving his meager water supply, and digging shallow depressions in the lee of dunes for meager shelter from the relentless sun.
But the desert was a cruel mistress. By the second day, the anger had faded, replaced by an aching exhaustion. The sun beat down with merciless intensity, baking the sand to a shimmering, hallucinatory haze. His throat was raw, and his lips cracked. The wind, once a gentle whisper, now felt like a taunting shriek, whipping sand into his eyes and stinging his exposed skin. He saw no signs of life, no faint tracks of beast spirits, no distant shimmering of an oasis. Just an endless, undulating sea of ochre and burnt umber. Each dune looked identical to the last, a cruel mirage of progress.
Night brought a different kind of torment. The desert plunged into an unforgiving cold, forcing Kaito to huddle against the sand, shivering despite his thin cloak. The stars, countless and impossibly bright in the clear sky, offered a terrifying scale to his insignificance. He saw constellations his father had taught him, used for navigation, but they felt mocking now, distant guides in a world that sought to swallow him whole. He ate his dry rations sparingly, each bite a chore, and dreamt of cool water and the familiar, if stifling, walls of Searing Sand.
By the fourth morning, Kaito was a ghost of his former self. His muscles screamed with every step, his head throbbed, and his vision was blurred by fatigue and thirst. The wind had died down to an almost imperceptible breeze, leaving the air heavy and still. He stumbled more often than he walked, his resolve wavering. Was this how his parents had disappeared? Lost, alone, consumed by the vastness? A wave of despair, cold and suffocating, threatened to engulf him.
Then, through the haze of his exhaustion, he saw it. A colossal depression in the landscape, not a dune, but a massive, circular crater miles across, its rim rising steeply from the flat desert floor. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, too perfectly round to be natural. Hope, fragile but persistent, flickered within him. Perhaps it was an ancient landmark, a signpost, or even a hidden oasis. Driven by this desperate surge, he began the slow, agonizing descent into its maw.
The air grew cooler as he descended, the sand giving way to rock formations that hinted at the crater's geological age. It took him hours to reach the center, the setting sun casting long, eerie shadows across the alien landscape. He stood on what looked like a perfectly flat, stone-like surface, a strange anomaly amidst the rough terrain. He squinted, examining the ground. It wasn't stone, not exactly. It was too smooth, too dark, almost glassy.
He took another step, and the ground beneath him vanished.
With a sudden, sickening lurch, the smooth surface collapsed, sending him plummeting into darkness. He cried out, a raw, hoarse sound, his arms flailing. He hit the ground with a bone-jarring impact, the wind knocked from his lungs. For a moment, he lay there, stunned and gasping, tasting dust and blood.
As his vision adjusted, a breathtaking sight emerged from the gloom. He wasn't in a mere pit. He was in a vast, subterranean chamber, carved with a precision that defied imagination. Before him stretched what could only be described as an ancient palace, perfectly preserved, untouched by the ravages of time and sand.
The walls, pillars, and soaring arches were not of sandstone, but of a material Kaito had never encountered. It shimmered with a deep, iridescent black, catching the faint light filtering from the sinkhole above and refracting it into hues of violet and dark emerald. It felt incredibly dense, impossibly smooth, and utterly impervious. This was no ordinary stone; it was something of immense value and extraordinary resilience. Tales of rare "Obsidian Heartstone" or "Star-forged Adamant" from ancient legends flashed through his mind.
He pushed himself up, wincing at the aches that shot through his body. The air here was cool and still, devoid of the biting desert wind. He could even discern a faint, metallic scent, like distant lightning.
He moved cautiously, his sandals silent on the polished floor. The architecture was alien, ornate carvings depicting strange geometric patterns and figures that seemed to hum with latent energy. There were no torches, no signs of recent habitation, yet the structure felt alive. He passed through enormous archways that seemed to defy gravity, entering chambers that dwarfed him. Some held enormous, empty pedestals, perhaps for artifacts long gone. Others contained vast, circular depressions in the floor, humming faintly with a dormant power that prickled his skin.
He found himself in a grand hall, its ceiling soaring into an unseen darkness. Here, the carvings on the walls were more explicit: depictions of beings with elongated limbs and strange, angular faces, wielding what appeared to be immense Ryu energies, shaping stars and sundering mountains. These weren't the familiar, grounded Ryu forms of his village; this was on a scale beyond comprehension. Were these ancient deities? Or perhaps, the true ancestors of Ryu wielders, from an age lost to memory?
In the center of this hall, a colossal, crystalline monolith stood, pulsating with a faint, internal light. He approached it hesitantly, his hand outstretched. As his fingers brushed its cool surface, a jolt of energy surged through him, making the fine hairs on his arms stand on end. For a fleeting moment, he felt an overwhelming sense of ancient knowledge, of power flowing through countless generations, and then it was gone.
He continued deeper, drawn by an inexplicable pull. He passed what looked like dormant energy conduits snaking along the floors and walls, intricate arrays of the same black, shimmering material. This was not merely a palace; it was a vast, complex machine, a place of immense power and forgotten purpose.
Finally, he came to a chamber unlike any other. It was smaller, more intimate, yet strangely the most potent. In its center, on a raised dais, lay a single, meticulously crafted scroll. It was not of paper, but of a fine, almost translucent material, glowing with a soft, ethereal light. Around it, the air hummed with a palpable energy, a feeling of deep, ancient Ryu.
He reached for it, his heart pounding. What secrets did this place hold? What power lay dormant in this forgotten palace beneath the sands? As his fingers closed around the scroll, a surge of power, more profound than anything he had ever felt, coursed through him, echoing the whisper of the wind that had led him here. This was no mere structure of stone and air; this was a sanctuary of forgotten knowledge, a testament to a power he was only just beginning to comprehend. The desert had not consumed him; it had revealed a path.