A storm of sand howled like a rabid beast, sweeping across an endless expanse of barren earth that vanished into a slate-gray horizon.
Through that hostile void, Jared and Flaxseed pressed on without hesitation, eyes fixed on the jagged peaks clawing at the northwest sky.
“Jared, you really think the Sixth Hall is tucked inside those mountains?” Flaxseed asked, sand clinging to his beard as his brows knitted in doubt.
Jared gave a subtle nod, his voice steady and sure. “It should be true. In his situation, Lord Eastshire was a fish in a barrel, hardly bold enough to lie. From the way he panicked, and then tried so desperately to hide it, you can tell he’s nothing more than a marionette. Whatever truth we’re after, it’s tucked away inside Sixth Hall.”
“That’s perfect!” Flaxseed’s eyes flared with feral glee. “The moment we locate Sixth Hall, I swear I’m going to make those butchers pay. Harvesting cultivators’ very souls, there’s no punishment savage enough. I won’t rest until every last piece of them is scattered to the winds!”
Jared cast him a sidelong glance—cool, unreadable, and vast, the look of a man born to stand above the fray.
“Relax,” he said, his voice as level as a steel blade, “Their lucky days are over. Before me, every crooked path and twisted art crumbles like old clay.”
Then, they headed west. With every mile, the land grew harsher, the horizon lonelier. At first, a few skeletal shrubs clung to life, a rabbit darting here or there.
Soon, even that hope vanished, leaving only rolling gold-brown dunes and a wind that slashed their faces like broken glass.
“Does anybody actually live out here?” Flaxseed muttered, using one hand as a flimsy shield against the swirling grit.
He hunched his shoulders, sand rattling across his cloak like hail on tin.
Jared stopped, spine straight as a spear. He pointed into the wind. “There… See that peak?”
Far on the horizon, a single black mountain stabbed upward, a titanic beast frozen mid-snarl. Even from this distance, it exhaled something cold and joyless, a promise that any who came closer would be swallowed whole.
“That’s where Sixth Hall hides?” Flaxseed’s throat bobbed. “Looks like every secret in the world is rotting inside that rock.”
A shiver rippled through him despite the heat.
Jared nodded, expression carved from ice. “The air around that peak is thick with stolen souls. Anyone forged there is bound to be monstrous but will still be defeated the moment they face me.”
They quickened their pace, sand hissing beneath their boots.
With every step the air grew heavier, as though night itself had bled into daylight, each breath a knife of frost.
“This place is strangling my power,” Flaxseed groaned. “Feels like an invisible hand squeezing my bones.”
Pain etched new lines across his weather-cracked face. Jared smiled, contempt sharp as flint. “Sixth Hall built a Soul-Convergence Array here. Ordinary travelers would be dust the moment they crossed its edge. But arrays and evil forces are children’s toys to me.”
A final rise of sand revealed the mountain’s foot.
