A year of peace had woven a fragile tapestry over Esteria, but threads of unrest began to pull at its edges.
The first sign came not from within, but from the distant, sun-scorched borders.
A caravan, trading with the western Oasis Towns, vanished.
Not a typical desert misfortune—no signs of struggle, no scattered goods.
It was as if the sand itself had swallowed them whole.
The Council of Coexistence received the report with growing unease.
Haruto, now a respected advisor though he shunned any formal title, felt a familiar chill—the same premonitory dread he'd felt before his summoning.
"This is not bandits," rumbled Gorok, a minotaur representative newly arrived to the council.
His people inhabited the rocky mesas bordering the desert. "The sands whisper of an old hunger.
An empire that refused to die." Lyra, studying ancient elven scrolls, looked up, her face pale.
"The Scrolls of Sunstone speak of the Aetheria Empire.
They fell millennia ago, not to war, but to a magical cataclysm—a 'Great Silence' that devoured all sound, all magic, all life.
Their capital, Sunstone Spire, was lost to the dunes." The council was skeptical. A fairy tale.
But Haruto's shadows, sensitive to the flow of magical energy, detected a disturbing void in the western deserts—a place where magic simply… ceased to exist.
It was advancing. Driven by duty and a need to protect the fragile peace, Haruto, Lyra, and a reluctantly intrigued Kaito (who had returned from his travels upon hearing the news) assembled a small, elite team.
Their mission: find the source of the silence before it found them.