The moment Marlos’ words settled, the shouting stopped.

  The outsiders clamped their mouths shut, their earlier courage vanishing. They glanced at each other as if knowing it was all true but never having thought that Marlos himself would speak so openly about it.

  The Warrior Chosen wasn’t joking.

  ‘Who is his brother? The Sultan?’

  Zamian thought, deciding to not probe more in public.

  He adjusted Tulip’s weight in his arms, keeping pace with Bohlo, who carried Soho with ease. Kurt, though visibly tense, focused on keeping up, his hands gripping the strap of his satchel tightly. The outsiders, though reluctant, had no choice but to follow.

  Then, another pulse of essence rippled through the night.

  Zamian’s body tensed.

  It wasn’t directed at them.

  Still, it wasn’t small.

  It was an overwhelming amount of Nature’s essence, spreading in controlled bursts from the direction of God’s Tree.

  Marlos and Zamian felt it clearly, their instincts blaring, calling their attention to the situation.

  “Ohohoho. I wonder who is playing with who back there,” Marlos muttered.

  Zamian nodded slightly, his eyes narrowed. It wasn’t a single cultivator. The consecutive spikes indicated the usage of dozens of techniques.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  After a few minutes of running in silence, Marlos veered slightly to the right, leading them toward something half-buried in the dunes.

  At first, it looked like nothing. Just another slab of worn-down stone sticking out of the sand. While rare and few among the sand that was mostly covered in giant roots, it wasn’t something that would catch Zamian’s eye, for example.

  But as they got closer, he saw it wasn’t stone.

  The material was smoother, fractured in places but still firm, resisting the wear of time better than the dunes around it.

  Marlos stopped in front of it, and ran a hand over the surface. “Concrete and metal,” he murmured. “That’s what the old scripts call it.”

  Zamian furrowed his brow. “Metal? Like forged weapons and accessories from outsiders?”

  He had heard of it and read it in books. It was one of the subjects of his talks with Clarice, while he spent some time interrogating the Mistress.

  Marlos let out a short chuckle. “Ohoho. Not quite. The ancients made things out of it. Whole cities. Before the Divine Calamity. There are not just a few types of metals, as there’s more than a type of tree.”

  Zamian nodded and studied the broken surface. The cracks ran deep, like scars from something far beyond normal erosion. The material was oddly cold to the touch, maybe because of the endless desert night.

  Then, he felt another spike of essence, but this one was close to him.

  Marlos swung his halberd, striking the sand beside the structure. Green waves pulsed from the wooden weapon, parting the dunes with sheer force.

  Zamian and the others instinctively stepped back, but Marlos controlled his power well, redirecting the moving sand away from them.

  Even so, the impact was immense. A sandstorm surged upward, rushing forward in a chaotic swirl. The ground trembled beneath their feet. Bohlo, Zamian, the outsiders—everyone, even Tulip and Edmund, who were being carried—reacted immediately, reinforcing their bodies with essence.

  Zamian’s sharp gaze caught the outsiders exchanging glances. He could tell they were considering making a run for it.

  But then, a single, forceful snort rippled through the air, carrying the weight of Nature’s essence.

  Marlos stood still, his halberd resting once more on his shoulder, his single eye glowing with an eerie green light.

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  The outsiders stood still.

  The sea of sand, now parted, had reshaped into jagged dunes, piling into makeshift ridges around the structure.

  And now, Zamian could see it clearly.

  It was a building.

  A worn, rectangular structure, eroded by sand and time. Squared openings dotted its sides, too uniform to be natural.

  Marlos moved first, skidding effortlessly through the shifting dunes. He looked back, grinning. “Come on, we don’t have much time, little ones!”

  The outsiders groaned but followed. Then, Kurt passed by Zamian, shrugging.

  “Great Sir, be careful not to trip," he muttered. "It’s not high enough to hurt you, but people would never let you live it down.”

  There was something dark in Kurt’s tone. Zamian didn’t miss it.

  ‘He must be speaking from experience.’

  Still, falling wasn’t possible for him.

  Even while controlling his wounds and holding Tulip, he had focus to spare. Copying Marlos' movements, he glided forward effortlessly.

  Bohlo, though more cautious and fearful of dropping his father, managed to keep up.

  As they arrived at the base of the building, the sand behind them shuddered.

  The four outsiders didn’t hesitate. They sprinted forward, heading toward one of the squared openings in the structure.

  Marlos let out a deep laugh. “Little ones, move faster! The desert dunes don’t like being moved like I made them do.”

  Zamian didn’t need a second warning. He dashed forward, slipping through the opening just as the sand behind them collapsed back into place.

  And the moment he stepped inside, the air changed.

  The floor beneath them was solid. Fractured, uneven, but not sand. The walls weren’t natural, either. Too straight.

  They moved cautiously through the structure, following a broken path. Whatever this place had once been, it had crashed into another building, maybe dozens of them, their remnants merging into an unnatural maze of collapsed hallways and fractured corridors.

  Marlos was letting the outsiders move ahead, but he knew where he was going.

  Their hurried, uneven steps weren’t from an attempt to flee. They just didn’t want to be here when the sand settled.

  Zamian adjusted Tulip in his arms. She clung to him but had her eyes closed.

  ‘Blight, it must be impossible to see for her.’

  Thinking about it, it was obvious that the deeper they went, the darker it would become.

  Bohlo placed a firm hand on Kurt’s shoulder, keeping steady. The way he moved made clear it wasn’t the first time he relied on the bearded companion to move in the darkness.

  Brown waves of Earth’s essence flickered beneath Kurt and the three outsiders’ feet, allowing them to move without stumbling. Edmund, still being carried, let out quiet groans as he used his essence to slow his bleeding.

  Marlos and Zamian, however, had no trouble seeing.

  The Warrior Chosen’s eye gleamed with an unnatural glow, scanning their surroundings effortlessly.

  Zamian, meanwhile, didn’t need essence to see in the dark. His sight cut through the shadows with ease.

  The broken passage twisted and turned, leading them deeper. It was a maze of collapsed structures, crushed together by time and weight.

  Walls of rough gray stone, fused in jagged, unnatural angles. A massive slab overhead, cracked but holding, supported by another structure that had been forced beneath it.

  Buildings weren’t supposed to be stacked like this, mashed together in a chaotic, suffocating tangle.

  Yet, they were still standing.

  Zamian’s eyes flickered across the walls as they passed. Unlike the concrete surfaces above, these were different. Smoother in some places, rough in others. Some had odd patterns carved into them, strange symbols and shapes, partially worn away but still visible.

  Others were painted. The colors long faded, peeling, but embedded into the surface itself.

  A few places had metal fixtures, bent and twisted, protruding from walls that no longer matched their original form. Some sections had what looked like metal frames built into the stone, shattered remnants of what could have been doors or windows.

  ‘Whatever caused the Calamity, it wasn’t the only thing responsible for all this.’

  At some point, people had moved the broken slabs, stacked the debris in ways that kept the sand from pouring in. They had carved out paths, shaped the ruins into something durable.

  Maybe, before building at the Oasis, they had even lived here.

  ‘Long ago, someone had tried to survive here.’

  The group pressed on.

  Then, Zamian saw it.

  A flicker of light ahead.

  For a brief moment, he thought it was a torch.

  But the closer they got, the clearer it became.

  ‘There is no smoke.’

  A small glass container, attached to the wall, holding a dull, flickering flame inside. Metal wrapped around the base, securing it in place. It wasn’t burning like normal fire. Instead, it glowed, a small pool of liquid inside feeding the light.

  Zamian narrowed his eyes, stepping closer.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Before they could reach it, Marlos suddenly stopped.

  His grip on his halberd tightened slightly, his eyes wandering to the holes beside the corridor they were walking through.

  Zamian’s gaze also moved, his face cold as his instincts whispered to him.

  Movement.

  Three figures appeared, blocking the path.

  Zamian read the brown texts above their heads.

  [LEVEL 3 - MORTAL TIER - ATTACHED PATHWAY]

  [LEVEL 3 - MORTAL TIER - ATTACHED PATHWAY]

  [LEVEL 3 - MORTAL TIER - ATTACHED PATHWAY]

  They were Great Warriors.

  Zamian’s eyes flickered toward Marlos. The Warrior Chosen didn’t look surprised, just mildly irritated.

  “They used to walk in fives,” Marlos muttered under his breath. “Which means two could be missing.”

  The lead Great Warrior stepped forward, his essence flickering subtly.

  His gaze swept over the group, illuminated by the single light source, pausing briefly on the wounded Edmund, scanning Paul, lingering longer on Kurt, and finally settling on Marlos.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the man said, shaking his head.

  Marlos chuckled, resting his halberd against his shoulder.

  “Ohohoho. Does my brother command everyone to remember my face and get in my way?”

  The Great Warrior’s jaw tensed.

  “No,” he said flatly. “It’s just hard for Oasis citizens to forget the Warlord who murdered their last ruler.”