The forge's heat clung to them like a second skin as Doran handed Ethan a weathered map, its edges singed and ink faded. "The ruins lie three days east," the blacksmith said, his voice graveled by decades of smoke and secrets. "The desert there… it doesn't play by our rules. What you see isn't always what's there."
Varyn lingered by the anvil, his stone gauntlets brushing the mythril runes etched into its surface. "You knew the first Swordmaster, didn't you?"
Doran paused, his calloused hands tightening around a half-forged dagger. "Aye. He came to me, same as you. Proud. Desperate. The blade's hunger already eating at him." He turned to Varyn, eyes sharp. "You're walking his path. You know how it ends."
"We're not him," Varyn growled.
"No?" Doran snorted. "You're both nobles who chose the gutter over the crown. Both too stubborn to admit when you're beaten."
Lira leaned in the doorway, her bow slung loosely over one shoulder. "We don't need philosophy. We need a way out."
Doran tossed her a vial of iridescent powder. "Throw this into the first sandstorm you see. It'll carve a path—if you're worthy."
Ethan tucked the map into his coat, the mythril blade humming against his hip. "Why help us?"
Doran's gaze fell to the anvil. "Because the Swordmaster was my brother. And I watched that blade turn him to ash."
The transition from the forge's ashen foothills to the desert was a descent into delirium. The air thinned, the trees shrinking into gnarled skeletons before vanishing entirely. Sand replaced soil, hot and granular, shifting underfoot like living flesh. By midday, mirages danced on the horizon—phantom lakes, crumbling towers, the ghostly silhouette of Valenhold's spires.
"Keep your eyes forward," Varyn warned, his voice muffled by the scarf wrapped over his face. "The desert preys on longing."
Lira scoffed, though her grip tightened on her bow. "What's it gonna show me? More dead brothers?"
Ethan trudged ahead, the mythril blade a lead weight at his side. Feed it truth, and it serves, the journal had said. But truth was a currency he couldn't afford.
The sandstorm hit at dusk. One moment, the sky was a bloodied orange; the next, a wall of grit and howling wind swallowed the world. Lira hurled Doran's powder into the chaos. It ignited midair, carving a tunnel through the storm, the sand parting like a curtain.
Inside the eye of the storm, the ruins materialized—a jagged black spire, its surface etched with runes that pulsed like a sickly heart.
"Trap's already sprung," Varyn muttered, nodding to the skeletal hands clawing from the sand.
Ethan drew the mythril blade. "Stay close."
The hands dragged them into visions.
Varyn stood in his ancestral hall, Cedric's soldiers torching tapestries bearing his house's crest. His wife's voice echoed: "You should have knelt."
Lira faced her brother, whole and alive, nocking an arrow aimed at her heart. "You left me to die. Finish the job."
Ethan stumbled into the slums, Jarek's gang circling. But this time, he held the mythril blade. "Burn them," it whispered. "Burn it all."
He swung—not at the illusion, but at the sand beneath him. Lightning erupted, scattering the vision.
"Focus!" he roared, yanking Lira and Varyn back to reality.
The ruins' core was a maze of mirrors, each reflection a warped truth.
Varyn shattered a mirror showing his family's pyre. "I don't need reminders."
Lira's reflection aimed an arrow at her brother's ghost. "I'm not you," she hissed, letting the arrow fly.
Ethan's mirror-self lunged, mythril crackling. "You'll die like him. Alone. Nothing."
"I'm not alone," Ethan spat, driving the blade into the glass.
The chamber below held murals of the Swordmaster's rise and fall.
Varyn traced the final mural—the Swordmaster entombed in roots. "He traded himself to tame the blade."
Lira read the journal aloud: "Sacrifice a memory. A truth. Let the storm take it… and live."
Ethan's scar burned. "We don't have a choice."
The ruins shuddered. Above, Vostra's wolves howled.
Ethan plunged the blade into the floor. Lightning annihilated the chamber, the storm, their pursuers.
When the dust settled, Ethan's mind felt hollow.
What did you give up? Lira's eyes asked.
He couldn't remember his mother's voice.
As they fled, the blade hummed, sated—for now.
But on the horizon, phoenix fire bloomed.
Elara was coming.
And the desert had taught the storm new hunger.