Chapter 63: Inner Zone: the Desert

You push through the final veil of foliage, the forest exhaling in your wake. The sun, an unyielding hammer, pounds upon your flesh. The air, dense with the scent of moist earth and evergreen, now feels thin and parched, carrying only a faint whisper of dust and an eerie metallic tang.

The symphony of birdsong that once filled your ears is mercilessly silenced, replaced by an unsettling stillness broken only by the occasional sigh of the wind. Gone are the towering giants, their verdant cloaks replaced by a vast expanse of sun-baked sand. The dunes, sculpted by the wind into sinuous curves, resemble the slumbering backs of forgotten gods.