By midday the heat returned with a vengeance, pressing down on them like a living thing. The dunes grew harsher, their curves sharper, the sand darker where mineral veins surfaced near the top. Travel slowed, not from exhaustion but from caution. The land here bore scars that didn't belong to wind or time alone. Long fissures split the ground at irregular angles, some narrow as a blade's edge, others yawning wide enough to swallow a caravan. From their depths rose a faint distortion in the air, like heat haze layered over something colder.
Lindarion adjusted their course twice, steering them around one such fracture. "This fault-line was sealed and reopened," he said, more to himself than to the others. "Not recently, but violently. Someone forced mana through it without regard for structure."
Nysha knelt near the edge, brushing sand aside with the tip of her dagger. The stone beneath was blackened, fused in places. "Devourer-corruption?"
