The desert never slept. It merely waited as the colors of the sky kept changing.
Kelvin walked slowly through a canyon of broken stone and sun-scorched cliffs, the trail to Riftspire were fading like a memory behind him. His breaths were shallow like as if sand were clinging to his lips, his eyes were squinting against the glare of noon.
His supplies had dwindled to scraps, two strips of dried meat, a half-skin of brackish water, and no herbs for the infection blooming in his thigh but worse than the hunger or the heat that he was experiencing was the pressure, the constant beat of the sigil beneath his skin.
Xerion stirred up within him, whispering, growling and testing every now and then, the creature would push like a caged beast slamming against its bars, urging Kelvin to unleash more of the power he barely understood.
And each time it urged, Kelvin resisted.
But resistance had its price.
The first trial came at dawn.
The sand beneath his boots shifted, subtly at first then violently, like a living thing was breathing beneath the surface. A low rolling sound split the air with a burst.
A Riftbeast, broad as a cart and armored like a tank clawed out from beneath the desert floor. Its segmented shell reflects small flashes of light with bone-colored in ridges and rows of luminous eyes blinked across its face.
The beast known as a Silicrawler snapped its saw-like mandibles, he released venom and it flowed from its fangs as it produced a high-pitched piercing sound.
Kelvin staggered back as he raised his spear instinctively.
"Draw on me," Xerion growled within, with his voice as molten and vast as a dying star. "Burn it down and break it."
"No," Kelvin whispered. "Not yet. Just… guide me."
He centered himself with his feet standing firm on the ground and his breath was steady. He reached out for Xerion's essence not fully, just enough to stir the sigil. A flash of crimson shimmered down the spear's shaft very subtle as a whisper.
When the Silicrawler lunged, Kelvin swung immediately. The spear arced forward with the tip igniting briefly just enough to pierce one of the beast's exposed eyes. The beast screeched and veered off course and slammed into a jagged spur with a wet crunch.
Its twitching ceased.
Kelvin collapsed beside the beast, panting. His body trembled with his sweat mixing with dirt all over his body. The effort had drained him and his control was clumsy like a child wielding a blade far too heavy.
But he had barely survived.
That night, sleep became a luxury he could not afford.
A flock of shadow-crows descended from the cliffs with its feathers glinting like oil in the moonlight.
They shrieked, cutting the air with wings sharp as glass. Kelvin fought them off with wild flaming jabs of his spear, setting a bush ablaze by accident and nearly choking himself with the smoke.
Then, the worse came…..
A pair of feral tamers appeared at midnight, their skin were pale and their eyes glassy, it was clear that they lost to Rift corruption. Each commanded skeletal lizards wreathed in ash, their bodies stitched with crude bindings of Riftstone.
The battle was chaos.
Kelvin was forced to unleash a burst of Xerion's flame which erupted from the sigil, melting part of a canyon wall. The stone roared down in a landslide, burying the attackers in rock and fire.
Kelvin didn't stay to check if they lived.
By morning, Kelvin curled beneath a jagged rock with his hands trembling, eyes bloodshot from smoke and guilt.
"I didn't want to kill them…" Kelvin whispered to himself.
"They were already dead," Xerion said coolly. "Then learn to command, or fall with the weak."
By the third day, Kelvin's mind moved on to the edge of the collapse.
His thigh pulsed with fever and hunger clawed at his belly like a wild animal. Even the spear in his hand felt heavier, dragging him with each swing, each desperate defense against the monstrous wastes.
But then, in the shimmering distance, he saw him.
A figure that was seated calmly on a blackened rock beneath a dead tree, dressed in tattered robes of silver and blue, untouched by sand or wind. His eyes glowed faintly, like starlight on water.
Kelvin stopped, blinking. "Who….."
"I was once like you," the man said before Kelvin could finish what he wanted to ask. His voice echoed, not in sound but in presence. "Bound to something vast, something ancient."
Kelvin felt the sigil stir but it was warmer this time, Xerion was silent.
"Your beast knows me," the man said. "Or rather… the one I once was is what you are now."
Kelvin stumbled forward, falling to his knees. "You… can teach me right? Please help me control it?"
The figure shook his head in disbelief. "Only a whisper of me remains, I cannot walk the path for you but I can show you where it begins."
He extended a hand, and a symbol flared before Kelvin's eye in the air, a glyph shaped like a crown coiled with flame, marking a location.
"There is a city in the east," the figure said, "Cinderglade. It is hidden beyond the black dunes. There, you will find others like you in a school called Sanctum of Bonds.
Tamers, real tamers and teachers who can help you rise in rank and survive what is coming."
"What is coming?" Kelvin echoed with a hoarse voice.
"Storms, wars which is a reckoning for all that is bound to the Rift. If you stay untrained, you will be devoured by Xerion, by others or by the world itself."
Kelvin clenched his fists. "How do I get there?"
"Seek a man named Maelin Rusk. He owes me. Tell him… the Phoenix Walker sent you."
The image began to fade immediately he finished saying those words.
"Wait!" Kelvin cried. "What is your name?"
The man's voice was already fading away when he said. "We are not called by names, we are legacies…"
By then then he was gone.
Kelvin staggered to his feet, the fever hadn't left him. The pain in his thigh still burned but something deeper stirred him, a flicker of clarity and purpose.
He had a direction. A name to find.
Cinderglade, the Sanctum of Bonds, Maelin Rusk.
But the path there might not be kind.
He faced the black dunes on the horizon, their winds were howling like spirits. Kelvin planted his spear into the sand and straightened himself to keep moving.
"I will tame this power," he said to himself. "And if I have to walk through fire to do it… so be it."
The sigil pulsed but was still warm and steady and with that, he marched toward the storm without looking back.