The Guiding Talisman rested between Jared’s fingers, its script pulsing like a distant heartbeat, tugging him west. He and the Vermilion Demon Lord tore across shattered ridgelines, following that faint pull wherever it led.

Level Twelve stretched beyond reason. Even with both of them pouring power into flight, the horizon refused to draw closer. Days bled into one another until, at last, the seventh sunset washed promised dunes in gold. Grit scraped between Jared’s teeth, while the tight coil of anticipation beneath his ribs told him they were close.

The farther west they traveled, the thinner the world’s breath became.

The familiar exchange of spiritual essence with the air dried to a rasp in Jared’s lungs, as though even the atmosphere had forgotten how to sustain life. Overhead, the once-blue sky had soured into a sickly ochre. Jagged fissures—charcoal scars ripped straight across the heavens—yawned open without warning, each exhaling a slow, predatory pull that prickled the back of his neck.

The wind stopped behaving like wind.

It slammed from every direction at once, packed with shards of broken space and skittering, unnatural currents. It scraped across his skin like a dull blade worrying bone. Even the body he had reforged through countless ordeals—and the Demon Lord’s crimson shell beside him—couldn’t ignore it. Pain bloomed again and again, sharp and deliberate, as if the storm took pleasure in their reactions.

“Damn,” the Vermilion Demon Lord barked, casually scattering a blood-tinged wind blade with a swipe of his claw. “This place is drier than a wasteland. But the more forsaken a land looks, the fatter the treasures buried in its ribs. I can smell opportunity under all this rot.”