Vale remained silent as he stared up at the starless sky for a long time.

  No thoughts stirred within his mind. Strangely enough, he was not thinking at all, he was simply watching.

  Lying on his back and half-buried in the cool desert sand, he might as well have been a statue carved into the dune itself. The world moved around him without his notice. Eskar remained awake and moved methodically from dune to dune, his quiet patrol cutting across the landscape as he kept watch for threats. Vale knew this on some distant, detached level, and he understood that Eskar was guarding them.

  But it did not matter.

  Something deep within him urged stillness. It was not sleep that pulled at him, but watchfulness. It felt as though his body had surrendered to the desert while his mind waited for something else to arrive.

  Time passed, though Vale could not say how much.

  Then, without warning, he closed his eyes.

  And he saw.

  At first there was only darkness, thick, suffocating, and absolute. Gradually, however, something began to emerge within it.

  A pair of eyes appeared.

  Or rather, the darkness concealed everything except them. A pair of mismatched irises, one blue and the other burning orange, hovered above him and gazed down with cold contempt. They did not blink, and they did not move. They simply observed him as though they were passing judgment on his very existence.

  Vale returned the stare.

  Strangely, he felt no fear. There was no intimidation and no panic, only a quiet sense of familiarity, as though he had encountered these eyes before, not with his physical sight, but with something deeper.

  Slowly and deliberately, Vale opened his mouth without breaking eye contact.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the eyes twisted slightly, their glow warping as unmistakable amusement crept into them. A voice followed, echoing from every direction at once. It sounded human, yet there was something undeniably wrong about it.

  “Who am I not?”

  The words slipped through the darkness with an unsettling ease.

  Vale frowned slightly as confusion stirred within him for the first time. Before he could speak again, however, the presence vanished. The voice faded, the eyes closed, and the darkness swallowed everything once more.

  Vale exhaled softly. Whatever it had been, it was gone.

  Yet the question remained, lingering quietly in his mind.

  He lowered his gaze to his hands.

  One was silver. The other was flesh.

  His fingers curled slowly as a strange sensation washed over him. It was disorienting and invasive, as though for a brief moment he was no longer entirely himself. Something felt different, as if another presence had slipped into place somewhere behind his thoughts.

  Without fully understanding why, Vale raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

  The darkness shattered instantly.

  The eyes were forced back into existence, flaring brightly as they reappeared above him.

  A soft chuckle echoed through the void.

  “Ohhh,” the voice murmured, its tone now clearly amused. “Feeling brave now, are we?”

  Vale opened his mouth to respond, but in the very next instant his eyes snapped open.

  He gasped sharply as the desert rushed back into focus. His breath caught in his throat and his heart thundered in his chest. For several seconds he did not breathe at all, until air finally flooded his lungs in quick, ragged pulls.

  His real awareness surfaced again, leaving him disoriented and shaken.

  “What… was that?” he whispered to himself.

  It had been a long time since he had experienced something like this. The last time had been during the vision of the orange-haired boy, the false angel. That memory had felt different, like a fragment of the past breaking through.

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  This, however, had felt present.

  It had felt active, almost conversational, as though he had truly been interacting with something.

  Was he communicating with something?

  Vale didn’t know, and at the moment he lacked both the clarity and the strength to unravel the experience.

  Soft footsteps crunched through the sand.

  Eskar stopped beside him.

  The crimson-haired boy stood there quietly for a moment, giving Vale time to notice his presence. Eventually, Vale turned his head and looked up at him. Eskár’s expression was tired, and when he finally spoke, his voice was flat.

  “Nightmare?”

  Vale hesitated before nodding slowly. “I think so. Something like that,” he replied. “Some… eyes spoke to me.”

  Eskar raised an eyebrow and considered the statement for a moment before answering.

  “It might be your enigma trying to communicate with you.”

  He sat down heavily in the sand and released a long, exhausted sigh.

  “Either way,” he continued, “it’s your turn to stand guard.”

  Vale nodded, still slightly disoriented. He pushed himself upright and brushed the sand from his armor before stretching slowly as Eskár lay down beside him. Within seconds, Eskár was asleep, completely out cold.

  Vale couldn’t help but chuckle quietly at how quickly his companion drifted off.

  Climbing a nearby dune, he took up a position overlooking the endless desert. His gaze moved carefully across the horizon as the hours passed. During that time he spotted movement in the distance, massive scorpions prowling through the sand, their obsidian shells glinting faintly beneath the night sky.

  Occasionally the sand itself shifted in unnatural waves.

  Sand dragons, or perhaps something else entirely.

  He watched them pass through the darkness, unseen and undisturbed.

  Despite the stillness around him, his thoughts wandered once more to the vision he had experienced.

  Those eyes.

  Were they truly his enigma?

  If they were, then what plane was Vale connected to for his enigma to speak in riddles like 'who am I not?'

  The question gnawed at him.

  Before long, his thoughts drifted toward Mirage. The wolf had once said that they were one, that they always had been.

  Vale still did not understand why.

  What was he, truly, that he could exist as fragments of multiple beings?

  He let out a deep sigh, the weight of unanswered questions pressing heavily on his chest as he stared out across the silent, merciless desert, feeling utterly defeated by his own mind.

  Vale stared far into the distance, his gaze fixed on the horizon.

  The sun was beginning to rise now, its pale light slowly bleeding into the sky, yet it was not the dawn that caught his attention.

  Far away, the desert itself was moving.

  Sand rose and fell in long, uneven waves, as though something vast were racing beneath the surface. The disturbance stretched across the dunes like a scar, its path unmistakable. Whatever caused it was fast, unnaturally so, and its passage left visible traces far above the ground.

  Vale’s eyes narrowed.

  A cold unease crept into his chest.

  Footsteps approached from behind. Without a word, Drago emerged and came to a halt beside him, his posture stiff, his gaze already fixed on the same distant disturbance.

  Vale swallowed, then turned slightly toward him.

  “What is that?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  Drago did not answer immediately. He watched the moving sand in silence, eyes sharp and calculating. After several long seconds, he finally spoke.

  “A sand dragon,” he said evenly. “And by the looks of it… a hungry one.”

  Vale’s breath caught.

  His eyes widened sharply as adrenaline surged through him.

  “Then shouldn’t we run?” Vale snapped, unable to keep the urgency from his voice.

  Drago remained still for a moment longer before unexpectedly shaking his head. He lowered himself into the sand beside Vale and settled there with unsettling calm as he continued watching the approaching disturbance.

  “No,” he said simply. “Let’s just enjoy the show.”

  Vale stared at him as unease crept slowly up his spine.

  Enjoy the show?

  He turned back toward the horizon with his heart pounding. The sand dragon was closing the distance at terrifying speed, its path carving violently through the dunes, until the movement suddenly stopped.

  Vale’s eyes widened as the desert fell unnaturally still.

  He scanned the dunes in mounting alarm, searching for any sign of the creature, but there was nothing, no shifting sand, no tremor, and no sound.

  A sharp chill ran through him as a troubling question surfaced in his mind.

  Where did it go?

  The thought had barely formed when the ground beneath their feet began to vibrate violently.

  Vale’s breath caught as he instantly recognized the sensation. It was the same deep, resonant tremor he had felt when the desert guardian had first emerged.

  His eyes snapped forward.

  In the distance, the sand erupted upward in a violent explosion that sprayed high into the air as two massive forms burst free from beneath the dunes. Their collision was thunderous, and the force of the impact hurled both creatures apart before they crashed back down and skidded across the desert in a storm of sand and debris.

  For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.

  Slowly, the two beasts began to rise.

  The desert guardian stood first.

  Its immense, wyvern-like frame loomed between Vale and the threat, instinctively positioning itself as a barrier. Sunlight caught on its rough, uneven, stone-like scales and revealed ancient scars and jagged ridges carved by countless battles. Streams of sand poured from its wings as it spread them wide, asserting its presence across the dunes.

  Then it roared.

  The sound rolled across the desert like an earthquake, deep, resonant, and filled with authority. It was not merely a threat, but a declaration of dominance.

  Opposite the guardian, the sand dragon rose to meet the challenge.

  Though smaller, less than twice the guardian’s size, it possessed a far more agile build. Its body was sleek and powerfully muscled, and its rough scales blended almost perfectly with the desert floor, as though it had been shaped from the sand itself. Coiled strength radiated from every movement.

  Wrath burned fiercely in its eyes.

  The dragon planted its four legs firmly into the dunes, its talons digging deep into the sand as it lowered its body into a predatory stance. When it roared in response, the sound was sharp, furious, and filled with raw hunger.

  Under the rising sun, two apex predators faced one another across the desert.

  The guardian remained unmoving, like an immovable wall of stone and ancient will, while the sand dragon crouched low and coiled like a blade prepared to strike and tear that wall apart.

  Between them, the desert waited in tense silence.