Once the march resumed, that suffocating silence returned to dominate the endless desert. It wasn't a normal silence; it wasn't merely the absence of sound. It was an entity in itself, an invisible mantle slowly descending upon the world, as if everything—the sand, the air, the rocks, even the light—had conspired to stifle any breath, any thought, any voice. A silence that didn't just accompany the journey, but guided it, watched it, judged it.
The previous event had unleashed a mixture of conflicting feelings in the young man's heart—fear, awe, curiosity—emotions that, in truth, were not entirely new to him. He had felt fear before, he had felt awe, and curiosity had been his constant companion since childhood. Yet, this mixture resembled none of the flavors he remembered. It was as if those same emotions, already known, had been immersed in a dense, viscous, ancient liquid. As if they had been returned to him through a distorted lens—heavier, more intense, almost primordial.
Every grain of sand seemed to have absorbed a part of it. Every grain returned to the young man something of himself he didn't know he had lost, or hidden, or feared. It was like walking through a land that remembered everything, knew everything, and had no intention of lying.
The desert was not just a desert. It was a test, a silent judge, a presence that scrutinized travelers without needing eyes.
And the boy felt it.
Every time he placed his foot on the sand, he perceived a very subtle vibration, as if an unknown heart were beating beneath the surface. Every time the wind blew just slightly, he could swear he heard something—a whisper, a murmur, a call—but each time he tried to convince himself it was only his imagination.
Kaelis traveled at a steady pace, sometimes even slow in certain stretches. His body moved with an almost unnatural precision, as if every muscle, every fiber, every breath were calculated to adapt to the terrain. Obviously, what had happened had destabilized him; that was why, the boy thought, he proceeded so cautiously.
But one only had to look at him to understand that this caution was not born there, on that day. It was part of him. It was a way of being. It was a reflex sculpted by years, perhaps centuries, perhaps entire eras of experience.
Kaelis's guard never seemed to lower. Every gesture was measured, every movement attentive, as if at any moment something even more terrible than what they had already experienced could happen. It wasn't fear, it wasn't anxiety: it was anticipation. It was a form of lucidity that bordered on the superhuman.
Since arriving in this world, the boy had practically had no long conversations with anyone. Solitude had been his companion, but he had never perceived it as he felt it now: heavy, dense, pressing. He was in a foreign world, with foreign rules, with phenomena that defied logic. And beside him traveled a man—or something resembling a man—who spoke little but saw too much.
In reality, the young man had never been one for many words: he often preferred silence, and rather than airing his mouth, he loved to reflect. He had spent years analyzing everything: events, choices, possibilities, fears, hopes, desires. His mind was a machine that worked ceaselessly, a river that flowed even when the banks seemed dry.
He would lose himself in thoughts—in the past, the present, the future—and enjoyed playing with his own mind, analyzing every fragment of what was and what could have been. He was used to digging inside himself, questioning, confronting. And there, in the heart of an unknown desert, that old habit had done nothing but intensify.
Yet, in that moment, he felt almost a duty to break that silence, to try and exchange at least two words with that hooded man whose face he still hadn't fully seen. A face he might never see entirely. A presence that followed him, guided him, and perhaps controlled him.
The silence between them had become too heavy, too evident, too invasive.
Kaelis was crossing a large boulder. It wasn't a particularly dangerous passage, but the uniform and unstable ground made it difficult to maintain balance. The boulder was flat, but the sand covering it made it unpredictable: with every step it moved, slid, gave way. The young man felt the sensation of walking on a sleeping animal that could wake up at any moment.
The boy, without thinking too much, decided to speak.
"This desert is truly immense, isn't it?" he said, with a light tone, almost uncertain.
He felt his own voice vibrate in the air like a forbidden sound. Too human for that world, too fragile for that silence. It seemed to belong to nothing around there.
He hadn't thought much about the words: he just wanted to talk a little, with a pleasant lightness. Perhaps he had hoped for a laugh, or at least a dry answer. Anything would have broken that invisible tension.
But his craving for dialogue was not satisfied.
Kaelis continued walking in silence, without even turning around, as if the boy's words had dissolved in the wind. He didn't slow down, didn't speed up, didn't change posture. Nothing. As if no voice had furrowed the air.
The young man swallowed. He understood this was not a simple man. That perhaps this was not the kind of person with whom one exchanged banalities. That lightness did not exist in his inner worlds. That words, for him, had a weight, a value, a destination.
Maybe he should have insisted, found a precise point to leverage to force him to speak. But not knowing him, he couldn't know which one. Perhaps Kaelis despised useless chatter. Perhaps he was absorbed in his thoughts. Or, more likely, he was focused on something the young man couldn't even perceive.
Since they started the journey, Kaelis had addressed him with only a few short, direct sentences, mostly in moments of danger, never more. No superfluous explanation, no digression, no detail that wasn't strictly necessary.
Yet, there was something that until that moment had escaped the boy's mind—a question as obvious as it was profound. A question that had tormented him since the very first instant he opened his eyes in that unknown world, and which, for one reason or another, he had never found the courage to utter.
Now, however, he could no longer hold back.
The silence crushed it inside him. Uncertainty swelled it. The desert itself seemed to push it out, like an invisible order.
He cleared his throat, and with a more serious tone asked:
"Where are we?"
The question detached from his lips like a stone thrown into still water. And indeed, so it happened: the air around seemed to ripple, as if he had violated an unwritten law.
The man, almost on the verge of descending from the large boulder they had been traversing for hours, stopped. The simple act of stopping made the desert even more silent, as if everything had held its breath.
He turned slowly toward the boy. The movement of his head was slow, controlled, precise, as if it didn't belong to a human body, but to a creature accustomed to moving in different worlds, where gestures had a ritual meaning.
The black hood covered his face almost entirely; only the mouth and a slight sliver of the nose could be glimpsed, just enough to define him as a man—or, at least, something similar. That portion of face was motionless, devoid of readable emotions. It wasn't clear if he was annoyed, surprised, amused, or simply indifferent.
He remained motionless for a few moments, scrutinizing him. He didn't seem to truly look at him: he seemed to look through him. As if he were analyzing not his body, but his question. As if he were weighing whether or not to grant him that answer.
Then, finally, he spoke.
"This world is called ᛁᛏᚨᛚᛁᚨ," he said, his voice deep and calm. "Or at least that is what the ancients called it. Today it is known simply as Italya."
The man's words hit the boy like a cold wind amidst the suffocating heat. They didn't seem to hide ulterior motives or ambiguity: they were sincere, direct. But their weight was enormous. It was as if that very name had a hidden meaning, an immense history, a memory that wasn't limited to what the man had pronounced.
The boy felt a shiver run down his spine. He didn't know why. Perhaps it was the sound of that ancient name itself, rough, etched rather than spoken. Perhaps it was the idea that this world was not just any place, but a land built by hands and forces he couldn't even imagine.
Yet, something didn't add up.
Why had Kaelis never told him anything before?
Why right now?
And why with that almost disarming naturalness?
The boy didn't have time to reflect deeply on that doubt, and immediately pressed on:
"Alright, thanks for the information… but where are we going now?"
Another question thrown into the void. Another voice pushed against that invisible barrier separating the man from everything else.
Kaelis didn't answer.
He turned again and resumed the march, without a word. The cloak swayed just slightly, as if it had no weight. As if it were made of shadows and not cloth.
The boy, believing he had said something wrong, quickened his pace to catch up. A strange sensation stuck to his chest: that of being a child who had asked too big a question.
After a few minutes, Kaelis reached the edge of the large boulder and stopped. The young man imitated him, and when he found himself by his side, he was left breathless.
The boulder was much larger than he had imagined: a colossal mountain, whose peak was lost between the sand and the light. The world seemed to bow at its feet. The desert stretched out below them like a sea of lava that only the greatest of volcanoes could contain, rippled by dunes that looked like waves frozen in time.
Kaelis, with a deep voice, spoke again:
"You ask me where we are going, curious to know. But you do not ask instead in which part of Italya we find ourselves."
Every word of his was a stone. Heavy, inevitable.
"I found you in the City of the Beginning, and I believed that at least you knew where we were, or that you had an idea. But apparently, that is not so. Italya is an immense land, and perhaps it is time you start to understand that. Down there, at the foot of this mountain, lie the ruins of ᚠᚨᛊᚢᛚᛚᛖ — forgotten remnants of a lost civilization."
Multiple pieces of information crowded the boy's mind like a flooding river. Ruins. Lost civilization. City of the Beginning. Ancient Italya. Modern Italya. An immense stratification he had never imagined.
He remained silent, unable to answer or ask further questions.
Kaelis finally added, in a lower tone:
"For now, we will camp just before the precipice. It is better to rest before descending. Rest, boy. Tomorrow a great labor awaits us."
The young man nodded. A small, almost imperceptible nod, as if his own neck had stiffened under the weight of the world.
The two set up the tent and lit a small fire, using the supplies Kaelis carried in his backpack. The fire crackled lazily, as if it too felt the effects of the desert. The low flames swayed against the light wind, casting long shadows that moved like living shapes.
It wasn't a gourmet dinner, but it was enough to survive. The boy, by now accustomed to that frugality, sat watching the flame crackle, while his mind returned to buzzing like a restless hive. Every thought triggered another thought. Every question opened three more. His brain was as tired as his body, but he couldn't stop.
After a long silence, he spoke.
"I don't know what to do," he said, with a weary voice, staring at the fire. "I arrived here by chance. Sure, it was my goal, but I didn't know what I was getting into."
The words came out slow, almost pregnant with a weight he had never admitted to himself.
"Until now things have been strange, at times dangerous and unsettling, but deep down far too simple, and this terrifies me. What will happen from now on? Will I be able to handle it? To withstand what awaits me?"
As he spoke, he lowered his gaze to the food, stirring it slowly with the metal spoon. The sound of metal against the container was tiny, but it resonated like a hammer blow in the still air.
Kaelis didn't lift his head, but after a few moments he replied, with a steady voice:
"You cannot know. And so why do you complain about it, and why do you blame yourself for it?"
The tone wasn't harsh, wasn't severe. It was a statement. A matter of fact.
"You do not yet know the laws of this world — and for this, I take full responsibility. But if you came here, there is a reason. Everything happens for a reason. This is the law that governs every world, visible or invisible."
Then he stood up, slowly folded his cloak, and turned toward the tent. The movement was silent, fluid, as if his body didn't truly occupy space.
Before entering, he added:
"Sleep well. Tomorrow, I hope things will be clearer to you."
Before the man could definitively vanish into that small space which for that night would be his little den, he added one last thing, perhaps the strangest he had ever said: "Boy, when you have doubts or feel like a victim of fate, remember ᛗᛨᛁ ᛈᛖᚱ ᚲᚨᛊᛟ, ᚾᚢᛚᛚᚨ ᚨᛊᛊᚨᛞᛖ. Goodnight."
The boy watched him close the tent behind him, unaware of what the man had actually told him, and thus also slightly smiling at the simplicity of that obscure fellow, who almost mocked his little knowledge of the world. The boy turned, sat down, and went back to staring at the fire.
The flames danced like orange specters, reflecting in his tired eyes. Every movement of the flames seemed to tell a story, every flicker seemed a call, every spark an omen.
He felt within himself a new sensation, a mixture of uncertainty and hope. Something he couldn't yet name. Something he didn't know whether to fear or welcome.
The wind blew softly. The fire flickered. The desert inhaled.
Finally, he sighed.
He calmly put out the fire, slipped into the tent, and lay down on the makeshift bedding. The fabric was rough, the ground hard, but for the first time since his arrival in this world, he managed to close his eyes without feeling crushed by the weight of the unknown.
Outside, the desert wind returned to blow softly, dragging away every sound, except the slow and steady beat of something—perhaps real, perhaps not—that seemed to pulse beneath the sand, in the bowels of Italya.
A pulsation that seemed to wait for him.
Watch him.
Call him.
And the boy, without knowing it, had already begun to answer.