The last traces of their lunch fire smouldered faintly behind them, nothing more than a wisp of smoke curling upward before the desert winds whisked it away. The brief shade beneath the dead bark tree was already fading as the sun climbed higher, and the sands ahead shimmered beneath its merciless glare. Luke slung his satchel back over his shoulder, double-checking the folded parchment tucked safely inside, while Ilyrana tightened the straps of her boots with careful precision.
The moment had come to move forward.
The Wasteland did not present itself as a singular road, nor a clear trail—it was a sprawling maze of dunes and hollows, of ridges and sudden drops, a place more akin to a shifting sea than a stretch of land. And yet, the parchment Barcken had provided them offered at least some sense of direction. It did not command one definitive path; rather, it branched like the limbs of a weathered tree, spreading out in thin lines across the sand.
