Half a day before the call.
Maro and Lan Lan had disappeared from behind the Caldoran Gate, only to appear in a completely different world, Ramalith.
Ramalith. The merciless desert.
The two landed amid swirls of dust, the hot air exhaling heavy breaths, carrying with it the smell of ancient ash.
Maru stopped first, adjusted his glasses, then looked at his energy device.
"Irregular heat waves," he said with the calm of a scientist speaking in equations: "Irregular heat waves, and the energy field here is partially deflated... as if something was ripped out of the ground by force..."
Lan Lan didn't respond. Her eyes were watching the sand, her body almost hunched over, as if she was breathing through the ground rather than the air.
"There's something... moving underneath us," she finally said, her voice faint and instinctive.
Suddenly, there was a deep humming sound, followed by an eerie ripple in the sand.
The first sandfish appeared. Not walking. It does not crawl. It swims underground as if it belongs there.
Suddenly, it swooped down, and Maru lunged back, firing a pulse of sound from his device that disrupted the ground around the monster.
But Lan Lan didn't retreat. Instead, she advanced, leaping over the creature's back with shocking speed, then plunging her sword into the back of its head, striking it again with her fist directly into its jaw, and it broke like a rock.
Her body moves with a savage fluidity, as if trained by wolves, her screams are not anger... but an inner strangulation that used to be released only in combat.
Maru gripped his device as he watched her, muttering: "Abnormal muscular pressure... Repetition in the killing pattern... That girl has a power unlike humans."
The beings didn't stop. They were more than a dozen, moving underground, appearing from unexpected directions.
One emerged from beneath Maru himself, but it jumped backward as it extended its arm to the sky, a magnetic pulse that temporarily hardened the sand, and the creature crashed and collapsed.
They fought for long minutes, the place turning into a bloody arena that glowed with the heat of conflict.
But suddenly... the sand was still, and the creatures disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, without any notice, as if something had ordered them to retreat.
Maru breathed, then said, "A subtle vibrational signal... it didn't come from us. They were ordered to retreat."
While they waited to understand what had happened, a huge caravan appeared on the horizon, pulled by half-beast, half-animal creatures, the faces of the passengers covered in tarps.
A front carriage stopped in front of them, and a tall man got out, completely covered, only his eyes visible, gray like dead sand.
He said in a hollow voice: "If you don't belong here, take refuge in Ulfar. It's the last village on the horizon... maybe not the last."
Maro looked at Lan Lan, she nodded, and they got into the last carriage. They did not speak. The road was silent, but overflowing with unheard voices.
In the carriage, one of the passengers spoke, his face completely hidden, but his voice was distorted as if he was speaking from a distant memory: "In the center of Ulfar... there is a broken glass basin. Before it appeared, monsters used to attack the village on a regular basis. But now... they avoid it."
A girl next to him said, in a singing voice: "The glass is pulsing... and whoever stares at it too long forgets its name."
Maru recorded this in his gadget, a book that memorized all the information he knew, and then looked at the man leading the caravan.
He was silent. He didn't move unless the road opened, his features hidden, but he had been watching them from the beginning.
They reached Ulfar, and it was almost dusk.
The village looked like it was trying to hide from itself, low buildings of molten glass, a leaning watchtower made of fossilized bones, and people... not talking. They just watch.
One of them approached them, pulling Maru by the arm, without a word.
"What are you doing?" Maru said quietly but sharply.
Lan Lan raised her dagger, ready to fight, but the others were too many. They surrounded them, moving like synchronized cells.
The masked man was still standing. He didn't interfere, but his gaze was watching everything.
The people led them to the center of the village, where a glass pit, asymmetrical, glowed with a faint pulse.
The air around the pit was motionless. As they approached... they felt a constriction within the heart, as if someone was pulling a thread from their consciousness.
One of the inhabitants said in a raspy voice: "You... are not one of us... so the monsters are waiting for you."
Without explanation, they were pushed into the pit, Lan Lan screamed as she tried to resist, but the earth itself swallowed her voice.
They fell...into darkness.
At the top of the pit, the masked man looked at them one last time, then said in a voice only the sand could hear:
"We have arrived... but the beginning has not yet begun."