The mini desert opened in front of Trafalgar like a stretch of land the world had forgotten how to keep alive. The last dying trees stood behind him with their pale trunks and empty branches, while ahead there was only heat, wind, and a broad expanse of sand broken by dark stone and long ribs of cracked earth pushing through the surface. Even the mana in this place felt different. In the forest it had moved with life, damp and restless, threaded through roots and leaves.
Here it felt drier, buried under the ground like something waiting rather than growing.
Trafalgar stepped forward without hurry, boots sinking slightly with each step. The sand shifted in soft whispers around his feet, the sound thin enough to vanish whenever the wind rose. He kept his eyes moving across the landscape, taking in the dunes, the exposed rock formations, the shallow depressions where something large might have passed not long ago.
