The village chief and the villagers tightened their grips on the tools they carried, sweat slicking their palms. Rage had driven them out of the village, but the desert was forbidden ground. And the road leading to the tower was a place no one crossed if they wished to live.
The village chief walked at the front.
He was Lily’s father—the only man who had ever gone to the tower and returned alive. Even though he had turned back halfway, he still knew the region better than anyone who had spent their whole lives inside the village. More importantly, he was a wise leader the villagers trusted completely.
He knew they trusted him.
And he knew they were risking their lives for Lily.
The anger boiling inside him gradually sank beneath the crushing weight of responsibility.
‘Even a spirit master would struggle if caught off guard. And a knight in heavy armor would fare even worse in a sandstorm. These storms co fast enough to swallow a man before he can react. Anyone who hasn’t lived through one couldn’t possibly understand. We still have a chance.’
At the very least, they understood the terror of sandstorms better than anyone else. That alone separated them from outsiders.
The village chief had never even considered the possibility that the outsiders had already reached the tower. Surely they were still trapped sowhere in the storm. Their plan was simple: ambush them and rescue Lily.
‘And if...’
If they had killed Lily...
He tried not to dwell on such thoughts, yet the image of his daughter’s bloodshot eyes kept surfacing in his mind. Her desperate cries of “Daddy!” rang endlessly in his ears.
Without realizing it, he stumbled.
Then he noticed sothing strange.
“Why isn’t there a sandstorm?”
“What?” one of the younger villagers asked.
The chief raised a fist, signaling everyone to stop. The villagers nearly crashed into one another before hastily freezing in place.
“This is strange. We’ve already been inside the sandstorm zone for a while.”
“What do you an?”
“...I didn’t notice because it’s been too calm. But this terrain... these rock formations... those sand pillars...”
The young man followed the chief’s gaze.
The blazing sun looked hot enough to lt the world itself. Endless waves of heat shimred above the sand, painful enough to scorch the eyes just from looking. Jagged rocks rose across the wasteland.
Aside from the eerie sand pillars, it was a desert he recognized well.
He had never traveled this route before, but the villagers of Oasis Village morized paths the way others morized prayers. It was how they survived.
It had taken him years to learn those routes from childhood onward.
But the village chief was different.
He rembered roads after seeing them only once.
“We spent a day here,” the chief murmured, as though searching through old mories. “It was so unbearably hot that we rested beneath that rock. Then when night ca and the sun went down, we used it as a landmark...”
His eyes drifted toward a distant hill.
“...and beyond that ridge...”
He stopped.
The young man swallowed nervously as the chief’s lips trembled.
Finally, the village chief shook his head.
“This makes no sense. There should be wind here. Sudden sandstorms that sweep everything away before anyone can react.”
“So what are we supposed to do?” an elderly villager snapped. “Turn back now? If today just happens to be calm, then we’re lucky! It’ll make catching those outsiders at the tower even easier!”
Spittle flew from the old man’s mouth as he shouted.
The village had only begun preying on outsiders after the current chief took power. The older generation still rembered the fear outsiders brought with them. Every encounter in the past had ended in suffering.
The village chief had never involved the elder in his cris. The old man only knew that outsiders had kidnapped Lily. Had he known what happened the previous night, he might have stayed behind in the village, consud by hatred instead of anger.
The chief understood all too well that it was his own greed that had led them here.
‘Without the sandstorm... we can’t defeat them.’
It would an the deaths of every villager present.
But neither could he abandon Lily.
“...I don’t know any roads here without sandstorms,” he admitted quietly. “Abnormal things are dangerous. ...Do the rest of you agree with him?”
“You’re saying we should turn back after coming all this way?” the young man asked.
No one wanted that.
They had co prepared to fight the vicious looters and save their precious child.
There were only three outsiders.
Surely they could win.
But before long, the villagers realized sothing far more terrifying.
“...Where did the tower go?” soone whispered.
No one answered.
The desert fell silent as a grave.
Perhaps it truly was one.
How many people had died here? There were probably more corpses buried beneath the sand than anyone could imagine.
At so point, they found themselves marching without purpose, no longer certain where they were headed.
They had trusted the chief because he knew the road to the tower.
But the tower was gone.
So where exactly were they walking?
The young man felt as though they were marching toward death itself.
His head burned. His throat felt raw and dry.
Then he saw sothing strange.
A beautiful light passed by them, carried on a cool breeze.
‘...Am I hallucinating?’
The wind blew.
Not a sandstorm.
The young man had never experienced such a thing before. It felt like the fresh forest breeze described in old stories.
Lost in a daze, he continued forward until he bumped into the village chief’s back.
The chief had stopped.
He was staring ahead.
One by one, the other villagers halted as well.
The wind continued to blow.
Cool and refreshing.
Like a single drop of water on cracked lips, it restored color to their faces and cooled the sweat on their skin. Clarity returned to minds half-cooked beneath the desert sun. Their blurred vision sharpened.
Three figures stood atop the quiet dune.
A tall blond man with a broad fra.
A long-haired elf.
And a black-haired man.
Each possessed an extraordinary presence, yet the villagers’ eyes were drawn only to the black-haired man.
The sight felt sacred.
His hand rested against a sand pillar. The wind swept through his hair, revealing a calm, beautiful face beneath it.
‘Ah.’
In that instant, the young man realized the truth.
The man he had mocked the previous day truly was soone noble beyond compare.
He covered his mouth.
A solemn silence settled over the desert, like a priest standing at the altar during a holy rite.
Whoooosh!
Light poured from the black-haired man’s hand.
The sand pillar collapsed.
A man buried beneath the sand burst free. Before he could even wipe his face clean, the village chief cried out.
“Thomas!”
He had once traveled to the tower alongside the chief.
The chief had watched helplessly as Thomas transford into a sand pillar. That transformation had shielded him from the raging sandstorm, allowing him alone to survive and return to the village—to return to Lily.
“...Otto?”
Thomas stared at him in confusion.
It was the first ti in years the chief had heard his own na spoken aloud.
Only then did he realize tears were streaming down his face.
The villagers erupted into noise monts later.
“Thomas! You little bastard!”
The elder who had argued with the chief looked the most shocked of all.
Thomas was his son.
“Ah! Father—ow, that hurts! Cough—ack—water, give so water...”
The black-haired man calmly pulled a waterskin from his pouch and handed it over.
Thomas seized it without even checking who had given it to him and drank greedily.
Then he suddenly froze.
His eyes widened.
“The water... it’s cold!”
“What nonsense are you talking about, boy? Since when is water cold? You idiot—I told you never to go near the tower... After we lost you, your mother...”
The elder’s voice cracked mid-scolding.
A mont later, he pulled Thomas into his arms and collapsed to the ground, his legs giving out beneath him.
“...Father.”
Thomas embraced him back.
Soon the entire area dissolved into tears.
Awe.
Gratitude.
Fear.
Sha.
Countless emotions tangled together in the air.
Amid the chaos, the village chief was the first to regain his senses.
The black-haired man had brought soone back from death itself.
He seed divine.
‘These people couldn’t possibly have hard Lily.’
Then where was she?
As though answering his thoughts, a crying voice suddenly rang out behind him.
“Daddy! Daddy! You can’t go to the tower! I said I won’t go there again! Don’t leave behind!”
A young girl’s voice.
Lily.
This ti, it wasn’t a hallucination.
His daughter was running toward him through the sand, sobbing as she stretched out her arms.
The village chief ran to embrace her.
User Comments
0 comments from readers