Vladis stood up and examined the map. Every path, every oasis, every dangerous region was marked on the map with fine craftsmanship. "I will find a way," he said, unshakable determination in his voice. "If that wall is her curse, then mine is her curse as well. Perhaps one key... opens the other lock."
He carefully rolled up the map and took it. Xara was watching him. "Be careful, Drakovan. That desert is not the world we know anymore. No one knows what lies behind that wall, what it has become after all these years. Also," she added, her voice shifting back to that business-like tone. "You will have... living needs. Those lands are barren. And don't forget, you are in my debt now. This information was a down payment for your service to our clan."
Vladis looked the woman up and down, slowly and exaggeratedly. That mocking expression had returned to his face. "For such valuable information, I suppose my debt is quite large. Perhaps I can make the payment... in installments."
Xara understood his insinuation. She rolled her eyes but couldn't suppress a smile. "Know your place, Drakovan."
Vladis turned to her, raising his claw-like hand, fingers slightly bent, in a salute similar to what the clan's warriors used. It was a sign of both respect and challenge. Xara returned the salute with a nod. "May your path be clear," she said. "And I hope you find what you are looking for. Because if Nydra is truly behind that wall, this will not be just your war, but all of ours."
Vladis, after one last look at the room and the impressive woman within it, turned and headed for the door. He now had a target, a map, and unexpected allies.
When he stepped out of the fortress of the Chain-Skull Clan, the air of the outside world felt different to him. He was no longer a fugitive or a hermit. He was a hunter. And his prey awaited him in the most dangerous, most unknown lands of the east. He turned his heading toward the place the map indicated, toward the Negor Desert, and vanished into the darkness of the night like a shadow. The most arduous part of the journey was now beginning.
When the massive, carved gate of the Chain-Skull Clan closed behind him, Vladis found himself once again in the familiar embrace of the night and of solitude. However, this solitude was different. It was no longer a void echoing with bottomless despair, but a sharp, focused silence filled with purpose. With the red parchment scroll on his back—heavy as a promise, precious as a secret—he turned his route eastward, toward the pale light of the setting moon. As he climbed up from that colossal, black-soiled chasm that housed the clan, what he left behind was not just an subterranean fortress, but also the phantom of a feeling of belonging he had felt for the first time in centuries.
His first nights on the journey witnessed the slow erasure of the world he was leaving behind. The ominous, ashen blackness surrounding the clan's lands gradually gave way to lighter tones, a geography dominated by gray and brown. The trees thinned and grew sparse; those proud giants that once reached for the sky gave way to stubborn, twisted shrubs and short, thorny plants. The ground changed beneath his feet; the damp and soft forest floor turned first to dust, then to a cracked, dry layer moaning from thirst. Even the air was different. Gone was the rich scent of decaying leaves and wet earth; in its place was the smell of stones, sharpened by the night frost and scorched by the day's sun.
This transition took two nights. Vladis quickly learned the difficulty of hunting in this barren land. The rich game of the forest was gone, replaced by scarcity. Feeding was no longer a show of power or a pleasure, but purely a struggle for survival. At night, he pushed his senses to their limit, hunting small prey. Sometimes he followed the trail of a snake in the sand, sometimes he hunted dangerous but nutritious insects, like scorpions, huddled in the hollow of a rock. This act brought him back to the most fundamental point of his animalistic nature; a pure hunter, stripped of pride and noble blood, killing only to survive. These simple nutrients were no substitute for the rich blood Xara had offered, but they were enough to keep the fire in his veins alive.
On one of the nights he fed, as he took shelter in the hollow of a massive rock to escape the wind, exhaustion claimed his body. When he closed his eyes, the curse made it known that it was waiting for his mind's most vulnerable moment. The darkness, this time not slowly and insidiously, but suddenly and daringly, took on Nydra's form. The woman stood before him in the sensual state he had seen in his dream; her dress, woven from shadows, further emphasized the pale white of her skin. "You're looking for me, aren't you, Vladis?" she whispered, her voice coiling like a snake inside his mind. "To come this far... shows how much you've missed me. Forget that boring map. Just whisper my name. I will come to you. Come to me."
Even in the delusion, Vladis tried to resist. This was a trap, he knew it. But the woman's voice scratched at that old wound in the deepest part of his soul. Nydra, sensing his resistance, smiled, but this time her smile twisted into a mocking viciousness. Her face contorted, like a monster bursting from beneath a beautiful mask. "Or... did you take a liking to that raven-haired bitch?" she hissed. "Are you growing loyal to her just because she gave you a room, a goblet of blood? Everything that woman offered you is so simple, so pathetic, compared to the immortal pain I gave you. Forget her, Vladis, you belong to me. Your body, your soul... and your damned curse."
These last words cracked like a whip in Vladis's mind, tearing him from the delusion and throwing him back to reality. When he opened his eyes, he was still in the rock hollow. His heart, despite no longer beating, fluttered in his chest cavity like a bird. Nydra's jealousy... This hatred for Xara proved that the curse was not just a random nightmare, but a conscious entity, somehow still connected to her. This thought chilled his blood. As he thought of Nydra, his mind involuntarily drifted to another memory, a more innocent, more painful time.
He was young again. He was standing on one of the moon-washed marble terraces of his father's manor. Below, in the labyrinthine garden, Nydra was wandering. In those days, she had just arrived in the kingdom, enchanting everyone around her like a spell. She wore a thin white dress that seemed to drink in and reflect the moonlight. As she walked barefoot on the grass, it was as if she wasn't walking, but gliding. She stopped for a moment, bending to smell a white rose that bloomed at night. That moment, that innocent gesture, had pierced Vladis's young heart like an arrow. His deep admiration for her, that desire to discover her, was pure and untainted in those days. He had wanted to believe her soul was as beautiful as her skin. This memory, now that he knew Nydra's true face, spread through his heart like a poison. The endless regret of not having been able to see the monster beneath that innocence...
He took a deep breath and banished the memory from his mind. Dwelling on the past was a luxury, and he had no such luxury. After falling asleep, he rose again just before dawn to continue his journey. As he walked, the desert's influence began to make itself truly felt. The air was drier, the temperature difference between night and day more extreme. After a few hours of travel, a silhouette appeared on the horizon. It was a settlement of dilapidated buildings, looking abandoned. Perhaps an old caravan stop or a small town.
As he entered the ruins, a strange feeling enveloped him. The destruction here did not look like the work of time or nature. The buildings were as if they had been victims of a colossal rage. On the walls, there were deep gashes resembling claw marks, unexplainable by normal erosion. The stones hadn't melted, but seemed twisted in pain. As Vladis moved among these unsettling remains, he saw a building in an open area ahead, standing apart from the others. And what he saw froze his blood.
The building was lying on its side. But this wasn't a simple case of it toppling in an earthquake. The building was in a position as if it were a living being, forcibly brought to its knees by someone. Its foundations were ripped from the earth, its walls bent like a spine. Its windows gaped into the void like screaming mouths. This was not an architectural ruin; it was the remains of a tortured body. Vladis paused for a moment in the face of this shocking sight. As he approached, the strange energy he felt intensified; in the air, there was an intense whisper of grief, fear, and pain, lingering from centuries ago. This was the memory of a place. And this place had witnessed something horrific.
As he got closer to the nondescript, rubble-covered entrance of the building, he felt a tingling sensation all over his body. It was as if he had entered an atmosphere charged with static electricity. And then, the world dissolved around him. The silence and pale colors of the present time gave way to the chaotic noise and pitch-black darkness of the past. He had been pulled into a vision, a memory.
He was no longer alone. He was surrounded by a screaming, fleeing crowd. They weren't human. They were humanoid, but they had leathery, bat-like wings on their backs. With their elegant, long bodies, pale skin, and pointed ears, they were clearly some kind of vampiric race. But the expression on their faces was not that of a hunter, but of prey. They were fleeing in pure, unadulterated terror from the fire and ash raining down from the sky. Vladis was like a ghost in this scene; no one could touch him, no one could see him. He could only watch this apocalypse from where he was rooted.
On the horizon, a massive army was advancing. Amidst the dust, smoke, and flames of fires, this army was no different from a natural disaster. Their figures were indistinct; a horde woven from shadow and steel, faceless, moving only with the will to destroy. They pillaged, slaughtered, and burned everything in their path. Some of the fleeing winged beings, in a last desperate hope, ran toward the building Vladis had just seen—which at that time was still intact and magnificent—and took refuge inside.
And then, the most horrific, most perverse act Vladis had ever seen in his life began. The invaders did not try to enter the building. Instead, they surrounded it. And they began to torture the building itself. Colossal chains, radiating an ominous green light, shot out from massive, unidentified war machines and wrapped around the building's towers and walls. When the chains tightened, the stones screeched like human flesh. Cracks began to form on the building's walls, but these were not normal cracks; they were more like tearing skin. The invaders were forcing the building to its knees. The towers bent like arms twisted in agony. The sound of the building's foundations being ripped from the earth was like the sound of a thousand bones breaking at once. The screams of the defenseless beings inside were drowned out by the building's own agonizing groans. This was not a siege; it was the live dismemberment of a monster.
Vladis was frozen in the face of this unimaginable cruelty. This was a kind of evil he had neither seen nor heard of in all his centuries. To inflict this kind of torment on a building, a structure, as if it were alive... This was darker, more diseased, than even Nydra's treachery. The building trembled in a final act of resistance and then collapsed sideways, like a giant whose skeleton had been broken. In the exact position Vladis had found it in the present time.
In the final moments of the vision, a young being with one wing shattered, threw itself out of a broken window of the collapsing building. In a panic, not knowing where it was going, it began to run straight toward where Vladis stood. A shadow invader sprang from behind it, its sword flashing. Just as the being was in front of Vladis, looking at him in desperation, the sword plunged into its back. At that moment, as the dying being's body was about to pass almost through Vladis, the light of life in its eyes extinguished, and...
The image shattered into a thousand pieces, like a mirror.
Vladis found himself on the ground. On the hard, dry earth. He was panting, and his entire body was covered in a cold sweat. When he opened his eyes, he saw the silent, calm landscape of the ruin. But in his mind, those screams, those groans, that smell of burning flesh and stone still echoed. He was so affected by the event that he couldn't get up. For a while, he just lay there, his body shaking uncontrollably. This was not just a vision. This was a memory. An indelible memory, etched into the soul of this land, these stones. And he had felt all the pain and horror of this memory, down to his very bones, as if he had been there. He was approaching the Negor Desert. And it seemed that in these lands, secrets even older and darker than Nydra lay buried. It would take a long, painful time for him to recover.
The brutal, seared image left in his mind by the vision stung like a wound in Vladis's soul. When he pulled himself together and stood up on his trembling legs, the silence of the dilapidated buildings around him seemed to mock the infernal chaos he had just witnessed. A single question circled in his mind like a poison: Had Nydra and her army committed this unimaginable, perverse atrocity? The very idea of torturing a building as if it were alive... This was beyond Nydra's known cruelty, a level of evil all its own. But if not her, then who? Was there an even more terrifying, more ancient power in these lands? As these thoughts, like warring serpents, gnawed at his mind, he could find no definitive answer, and a feeling of both rage and deep apprehension began to sprout within him.
He could not stay here any longer. The memory of this place was closing in on him like a toxic fog. With slow, heavy steps, he put the ghost of that tortured building and the massacre he had witnessed behind him and set off again. The barren land slowly began to change its character, as the last resisting, feeble plants gave way to complete nakedness. The ground was no longer a cracked crust, but a sea of fine sand grains that moved with the wind, constantly shifting shape. He had entered the Negor Desert.
During the day, he had to protect himself from the sun, the ruthless ruler of this new world. In this land, where not a single cloud veiled the sky, the sun's rays pierced like needles, agonizing even his immortal skin. He had to find shelter during the most scorching hours of the day to gather his strength. Sometimes he sheltered in the shadow of a massive rock formation, sometimes in a temporary hollow he dug out beneath the sand. In these moments of rest, he hunted the hidden life of the desert. He could feel the movement just beneath the sand, and using his fingers like claws, he caught the fleshy insects in the depths of the sand or the small reptiles that had taken refuge in the coolness of a rock. This was an ignoble but necessary ritual of survival.
The moment the sun vanished over the horizon like a blood-red wound, the desert's true face was revealed. The infernal heat of the day gave way to a sharp, bone-chilling cold. Vladis knew he had neither time nor shelter in these lands. Therefore, the moment the first shadows of night fell upon the desert, he began to move at his maximum speed. As the sand beneath his feet scattered like a whisper under his steps, he was no different from a black phantom heading east. The wind billowed his cloak behind him like a battle standard, and the grains of sand he kicked up left a momentary, ghostly trail in his wake.
On one of the nights he was moving swiftly, while the landscape ahead was completely open and unobstructed, he suddenly stopped as if he had hit a stone wall. The collision was so violent that even his superhuman body shuddered from the sudden impact. An involuntary groan of pain escaped his lips, and he was thrown onto the sand. As he got up, he spat a curse in anger. There was nothing in front of him. Not a rock, nor any other obstacle. Just the endless desert and the stars... Wondering what he had hit, he cautiously moved his hand in front of him. And his fingertips touched something in the middle of the void, smooth as glass but hard as steel. His eyes could clearly see behind the obstacle. The dunes, the stars... everything was there. But there was no passage. An invisible wall.
Vladis probed this invisible surface with his fingers. There was no crack, no seam. It was perfect. Angrily, he tried to crush, bend, and push the surface with his fingers, but the surface didn't show the slightest give. He stepped back and drew "Midnight" from its sheath. Even his sword's light-absorbing black steel looked helpless before this invisible barrier. He began to strike the wall with his sword, cautiously at first, then with growing fury. With every blow, as the sword's tip struck the invisible surface, bright blue sparks lit up the night's darkness for an instant. But not a single scratch formed on the wall. In a final effort, gathering all his strength, he tried to stab his sword into the wall. The sound of the impact echoed across the desert like a peal of thunder, but the result was the same: absolute resistance.
As these futile attempts continued, he heard the faint sound of a woman laughing, as if drifting in on the wind. Vladis paused and looked around, but saw no one. This was both unnerving and fueling his anger even more. Just then, the air began to change. The calm night gave way to a strengthening wind. The wind was blowing strangely, from a single direction, from west to east, directly toward the invisible wall. Vladis sensed something was wrong with this. The wind quickly turned into a storm. His armored cloak whipped about in the wind's force, its metal pieces screeching. He was beginning to have trouble staying on his feet.
The storm escalated beyond a normal desert storm, reaching an extraordinary, supernatural force. The sand was no longer just lifting from the ground; it was undulating like a body of water. When Vladis looked to the west, his blood froze at the sight. On the horizon, a colossal, massive body of sand, a giant vortex spinning on itself that covered the sky from one end to the other, was coming toward them. This wasn't a storm; it was an apocalypse of sand. As he stood there, unsure what to do, a momentary, lightning-like flash occurred in the sky, and his surroundings were illuminated for an instant with a blinding white light. In that brief moment, Vladis saw faint patterns on the surface of the invisible wall, formed by the refraction of light.