“Strange… Kishor is nowhere in sight,” Flaxseed muttered, scratching his sparse beard. “He didn’t leave without us, did he?”

“No,” Jared replied, voice quiet yet stone-sure. “if something delays him, so be it. We proceed alone.”

He had complete trust in Kishor’s loyalty. With that verdict rendered, they veered straight for the black-mawed entrance of Darkwind Gorge.

Darkwind Gorge looked like a corner the world itself had renounced. Ink-dark gales whipped through the ravine, carrying sand as fine as ground obsidian that crackled against the stone like skeletal applause, a chorus of wronged spirits grieving in secret.

Flanking the entrance rose twin night-black statues, ten-story high, carved as snarling yakshas. Greenish flames smoldered in their hollow eyes, fixing every trespasser with a hunter’s patience. Dried blood streaked their torsos, the iron tang still clinging to the wind.

Beyond them, sheer basalt walls clawed upward, their fissures exhaling a shrill lament that shifted from a woman’s sob to a beast’s roar. Above, a ceiling of charcoal clouds crushed the sky, allowing only a bruised, reluctant light to seep through.

The instant Jared’s spiritual sense brushed the interior, a syrup-thick stench of blood slammed into him. Demonic aura swirled with the scent, coalescing into a wine-red mist that drifted between the rocks like something half liquid, half nightmare.