The journey into the Whispering Sands was a descent into sensory deprivation.
The vibrant colors of Esteria faded to a monotonous beige.
The sounds of wildlife ceased.
The very air grew thin and still.
Magic became sluggish, then unreliable.
Kaito's Sun-Blade flickered like a dying candle.
Haruto's shadows felt thin and strained, as if stretching over an infinite void. They found the caravan.
The people and camels were not dead, but frozen in mid-action, their faces locked in expressions of sudden terror.
They were not stone, but trapped in a stasis where time and magic had simply stopped.
Touching one was like touching cold, solid air. "This is not a force of nature," Lyra whispered, her voice unnaturally loud in the hush.
"This is a will. A conscious hunger."
They pressed on, guided only by the growing null-zone in Haruto's senses.
Finally, they saw it: the tip of a colossal, crystalline spire piercing the dunes, made of a material that seemed to absorb the sunlight rather than reflect it.
This was Sunstone Spire. And from it, the Great Silence pulsed like a dying heart.