The black desert whispered so many nas that Kelvin didn’t know.
They called out with voices that are too ancient to be carried in a mortal’s throat, yet they found their way into the premise of his thoughts, brushing like spider silk against the walls of his mind.
Words in languages that he could not understand slid past his ears sounding soft, seductive, and terrifying.
He ignored them.
Each step into the dunes was like stepping into a dream woven from charcoal and grief. The sand under his feet was not sand, they are like ashes, burnt glass and bone broken into dust.
Every of his footstep sank deeper than it should, as though the land yearned to consu him, swallow him whole, and forget he’d ever existed.
But he pressed on.
The sigil on his chest had stopped pulsing so hours ago. Even Xerion had gone quiet, whether from respect or unease, Kelvin couldn’t say.
But experiencing silence was never comforting when dealing with a creature like the End-Tyrant.
Kelvin continued to walk until the sky shined crimson like rays with the death of day.
The horizon was harsh, rough and cracked like a shattered tooth as the last light was casting along shadows that moved when they shouldn’t move.
Kelvin seed like soone who is trapped in a vision.
The wind rose in a high pitch, beating his cloak with a whip into the air. The sands around turned to blades, flipping across his skin.
He dropped to the ground on one knee, shielding his face, but sothing was pulling him forward, dragging him through the gate.
Then Cinderglade, a city of hereditary monarchy and highly revered sanctuaries which are ringed by massive beasts carved into its periter.
In the center of this all he saw Maelin Rusk.
A man older than Kelvin had imagined. He had eyes like burned parchnt and with his voice like a thunder trapped in a bottle.
"Co, child of fire," the voice said. "Co, before the stars forget your na."
Then he snapped out of the vision.
Kelvin landed hard into the ash, gasping for breath and the gate was gone.
But ahead of him he can see that the desert had changed, and a path had ford, this path seems solid, winding and leading to the east towards Cinderglade.
"The Phoenix Walker hadn’t lied," Kelvin said to himself.
Imdiately he rose from the ground, dusting himself off. His thigh was burning with fever, but his resolve was sharper than ever. His journey had truly begun.
*************************
Days passed.
The desert tested him in many ways more than he had ever been tested. The Rift had touched this place deeply.
He faced an Ashwights a humanoid phantom that echoed so words into Kelvins ear. They didn’t bleed and they didn’t breathe. He continued to repeat those words while trying to rip out his soul.
But Xerion helped him by whipping off the Ashwights.
Kelvin tried to avoid a Riftstorm by building a shelter over a buried temple, where he encountered a mirror beast, a creature that took his form and fought him as himself with so much strength without exhaustion and without hesitation.
The beast nearly killed him.
But at the last mont, when Kelvin fell to the floor bleeding as the mirror beast raised his own flaming spear to end Kelvin, Xerion roared.
"Not him."
The creature shattered into pieces of strands, evaporating into ash.
Kelvin never understood why Xerion intervened, but that was the first ti the beast had chosen to save him without hesitation.
******************************
On the tenth night, as he cooked scorpion at over a flickering fla, a dark shape appeared over the desert.
This ti what he saw was not a beast but a person.
"Kelvin," the voice called.
Imdiately Kelvin stood up with his spear in hand. "Who’s there?" He asked.
At that point a woman approached dressed in a desert-wrapped leathers, her silver eyes were shining bright.
She moved like soone is used to heat, dust, and silence fully graceful, calculative and efficient.
"My na is Lira of the Scorchbinders," she said, raising her empty hands in peace. "I was told to watch for a tar traveling alone who is burning from within."
Kelvin didn’t lower the spear, rather he asked her.
"Who told you?"
"The Phoenix Walker did," she said simply. At that point Kelvin froze.
Lira approached the fire where kelvin is, knelt down and placed a stone next to the fla.
"You’re real," Kelvin muttered. "You are not just another hallucination."
She smiled. "Oh! I am very real, and you are indeed lucky because very few have been able to cross the Desert of Mourning without going mad. You have lasted longer than many who tried to pass through it."
He sat down slowly and asked the woman. "Why are you here?"
"I am here to guide you the rest of the way," she said, her tone shifted from been casual to been official and serious.
"Cinderglade where you are headed to is not far again, but there are Seekers and tars who serve the Rift willingly and they don’t like untrained ones wandering close."
Kelvin tightened his hand around his spear and speak. "Let them try."
Lira said to Kelvin. "I can see that you are bold, but you will need more than fire and pride where for where we are going to."
She gave him a small herb and spoke. "Drink you are infected, and fever might kill you before they do."
He stared at the herbs extract, then at her and asked. "Why are you helping ?"
"Because you matter," she said in a quiet tone. "Because whatever you have bound... is not just another Rift beast but it is sothing older and because I was told to."
Kelvin went ahead and drank the portion given to him.
The taste was very bitter which made him to regret taking the herbs.
They traveled together the next two days.
Lira taught him how to channel his bond without fully unleashing Xerion by using his breath, posture and thought. She showed him fla marks on the sand, old signals of beast tar trails.
She taught him how to read wind shifts for incoming Rifts, and how to suppress his aura to avoid attracting predators.
She was different from anyone he had t she is not soft but not cruel. She did not ask for his past.
One night, she sat beside the fire and told him of Scorchbinders, a rogue guild of tars who refused to be claid by empires or cities.
They were trained in wastelands, they tad storm wyrms, lava drakes, and dusk hounds and they were outlawed in three nations.
Kelvin listened without disrupting their discussion.
The final day began with blood.
As they reached a steep cliff overlooking the sunken valley that held Cinderglade, the air turned into a foul smoke of screams.
Lira cursed, drawing twin daggers. "Seekers they have attacked the outer sanctum."
Kelvin’s heart skipped.
Lira turned to him. "Stay here. I will scout..."
"No," Kelvin said, stepping forward. "I am going with you."
"Don’t be a fool......"
"I’m done hiding. This is why I ca, and I am not just so novice with a scary bond. I am a tar, and I fight."
Lira stared at him, asuring his courage, when she realized that he is determined, she nodded in agreent.
Together, they descended.
The battle was full of chaos.
Kelvin and Lira struck like arrows through the smoke.
Kelvin wielded his spear with new precision, channeling flickers of Xerion’s fla, not to destroy, but to disable others.
He shattered many tendons, blinded so beasts and shielded wounded tars.
Lira moved like a storm; her daggers were dancing between armor joints and beast scales.
Then ca the Seeker commander, a tall man that has no face, just a Rift-mask fused to his skull. His beast was a Rift Leviathan, a serpent of tar and smoke, coiled around the eastern gate.
Kelvin stepped forward.
The sigil burned white under his arm.
"Xerion," he said with a low voice. "I need more." The beast boasted.
"You will break." Kelvin said.
"Then break after now but now but right now I will burn you."
A pillar of black fire exploded from the chest of the beast.
Kelvin’s eyes glowed like a crimson. The spear in his hand beca a lance of shadow fla as he charged towards the beast.
The battle was brief but a devastating one.
He pierced the Leviathan’s mouth and exploded its core from within. The Seeker scread as Rift backlash ca out through him.
Then there was silence. The Sanctum defenders stared at Kelvin.
Then soone whispered: "Is that... the End-Tyrant’s fla?"
And just like that, the story began to spread.
Hours later, Kelvin stood before the gates of Cinderglade and he was granted entrance.
Inside the old standing towers that rose like teeth. Beast tars of every rank, creed, and origin watched him pass, so in awe, others in fear of Kelvin.
Maelin Rusk waited at the top of the steps.
"You made a great entrance," he said, with his voice like a gravel ground under a moving boot.
Kelvin stepped forward, exhausted but unbroken.
"I’m here to learn. To ta this power and not to be its slave."
Maelin studied him and slowly nodded his head.
He said to Kelvin, "Welco to the Sanctum of Bonds, Kelvin. Your trial begins now."
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