Chương 126: Chapter 59: With the Temerity the King Commands

The march through the sand began in silence under the starry shroud. Advancing through the dunes was a torment distinct from that of firm ground. Every step sank, requiring extra effort. The night wind, though less ferocious than that of the day, whistled with a ghostly sound and dragged fine curtains of sand that slipped through any opening. Selena counted the time by the slow but inexorable movement of the moon across the starry sky.

It was at least five hours of steady, constant marching, a slow but relentless advance through a sea of shadows and undulating shapes. When they finally arrived, the landscape was austere and ominous. Before them, half-buried in the sand like the bone of a forgotten giant, rose a tower. It was made of reddish sandstone, shattered in some parts as if a colossal blow had broken it in the remote past.

Millennia of sand-laden wind had done their work: all the edges were smoothed, rounded, eroded until they appeared organic, like a natural formation rather than a construction. The entrance, a dark, low arch, resembled the mouth of a sleeping beast. —We will set up base camp here —Magnor announced in his cordial yet firm tone, echoing in the silence of the incipient dawn. They worked with the efficiency of exhaustion and urgency.

They erected reinforced tents anchored deep into the sand, organized the supplies, and dug a small, sheltered hole for a controlled fire. Just as they finished, the sun began to peek over the horizon, bathing the dunes in a harsh, golden light that transformed the nocturnal landscape into a developing oven.

Selena took the opportunity to refill her silver canteen to the maximum, wash her face and hands with a little of the precious liquid, and then they all sat down to eat a cold but hearty ration consisting of stale bread, cured cheese, and dried fruit. It was necessary. Soon, there would be no pauses at all. The silence, broken only by the crunching of food and the whisper of the wind that was beginning to warm, was dense, heavy. —Why didn't the titanopods flee when they brought us in the carriage from the capital?

—Selena asked suddenly. It was a question that had been nagging at her for weeks. Animals instinctively feared resonants. Magnor finished chewing a piece of cheese before answering. —They were marked —he said, with the naturalness of someone explaining a common procedure. Selena and Astrid raised an eyebrow; it was clear the northern woman had shared the same question. The giant continued to explain, adding details. —With a high-grade written touch.

A spell of calm and resistance to fear, imbued into their carapaces. It lasted about three and a half months, just in case the journey was delayed. It is expensive and complex, but for a royal mission… He shrugged, as if the expenditure of power and resources were a mere logistical anecdote. Selena nodded, understanding. It was the essence of the Void to reclaim, dominate, and impose itself against reality. Then an idea came to her clearly. Perhaps only resonants see solutions this way.

She asked no further questions; the bitter taste of the thought remained in her mouth. Dalil and his nephew Kaden, who had guided them safely through the nocturnal dunes, approached then. The boy, diligent and silent, gathered the remnants of the food. Dalil stood up, his serene figure silhouetted against the rising sun that now struck the tower head-on. —I will guide you to the very entrance —he declared firmly, his Erahari perfect but his tone inflexible.

However, a slight trembling of his hands betrayed that his body was not as steady as his own conviction. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. —But no human who values his life, his sanity, or his soul will cross that threshold. It is a line that is not crossed. Everyone nodded, a unanimous and grave movement. It was not cowardice; it was common sense, an unwritten law of survival on the borders of the desert.

With Dalil and Kaden leading the way, they undertook the final stretch, the path toward the entrance of the dungeon. As they drew closer, the half-buried tower gained more and more size before their eyes, revealing a scale that could not be appreciated from a distance. It was larger, more massive than Selena had imagined, a monumental scar on the side of the desert. After twenty minutes of marching through the sand, which grew increasingly compact near the rocky base, they stood before it.

The entrance arch was low and wide, carved with symbols so eroded they were barely suggestions in the stone. Inside, there was only darkness, an absolute and still blackness that seemed not to reflect a single shred of the dawn's light, as if the entrance itself swallowed the photons. A cold, stagnant air, smelling of millennia of dust, dry stone, and something ancient and metallic, exhaled from within. Everyone grouped instinctively around Magnor, the most experienced, the Purified.

The giant looked at each of them, his weathered face serious but not terrified. When he spoke, his voice was gentle, almost cordial, like that of a father giving advice before a difficult journey, but his words were of tempered steel. —Remember to stay together —he said, and his words floated in the heavy air. —Dungeons are not a game. They are traps for souls, cemeteries of hope. If any of us falls, if any is wounded, the main mission of the nearest person is to heal them. Immediately. If the wound is…

unavoidable, if it is mortal or mutates them irreversibly… they will be left to die. With compassion, if possible. It is a burden, but it is the law. He paused, letting the horror of that instruction settle. —If we are separated, for any reason, the objective is to return to the point of separation or to the entrance. If we do not find one of us after fifteen minutes of active searching… they will be presumed dead. There are no heroic rescues that end in massacres. If we are separated and cannot reunite… fight.

Survive. Luch until your last breath, because death here can be a gift compared to what awaits you if you are captured by the… things that inhabit these places. His gaze swept over their faces, looking for understanding, not reckless courage. —Remember why you are doing this. For a king, for a kingdom, for knowledge, for vengeance, for the truth… Cling to that. And remember, above all, that we are, ultimately, human. Flesh, bone, fragile mind.

These dungeons are cursed places, where the laws of reality bend to the point of the most absolute horror. He took a deep breath, and for the first time, a spark of something that could have been fervor, or perhaps just fanatical determination, lit up his gray eyes. —It is for that reason, precisely because we know that risk, that we prepare to enter. With the temerity Her Majesty commands us, but also with the preparation we have sweated for. We will return. And our achievement will be notable. Do not doubt it.

He stopped speaking. The faces of Selena, Astrid, and Alistair were serious, pale, carved in deadly concentration. They had accepted the price. The faces of Dalil and Kaden, by contrast, were pure horror. A mixture of respect and deep pity for these madmen who, voluntarily, were stepping into the mouth of hell. Dalil gave one last nod of his head, a gesture of farewell and good omen that seemed ridiculous given the magnitude of what they were about to do.

Then, he and his nephew turned around and began to walk away, leaving the group of resonants and the countess in front of the dark arch, beneath the rising sun that failed to penetrate even an inch of the darkness awaiting them inside. It was then that Magnor raised his voice, clear and serious, with the authority of a veteran who has seen too much and knows that fear is only conquered with discipline.

—In position —he ordered, without raising his tone, but with a firmness that cut through the heavy silence of the entrance. —Remember what we practiced. Everyone obeyed with the precision of a well-oiled mechanism, the fruit of weeks of brutal training and obsessive repetition. Selena took her place at the rear, as they had agreed: her sharp perception and her instinct for the hidden made her ideal for watching what might emerge from behind, or from where the light could not reach.

Her right hand rested on the hilt of her short scimitar; in her left hand, she wore the bronze ring on her index finger, feeling its ancient and promising calm. —Let us advance —Magnor said, and it was not a suggestion, but the beginning of a ritual. They crossed the threshold. The darkness was not a mere absence of light; it was a substance. A dense, viscous black that seemed to swallow not only the glow of their torches, but the very memory of the sun they had just left behind.

The air changed immediately: the dry cold of the desert night was replaced by a damp, stagnant chill, heavy with the smell of stone wet for millennia, rust, earth compacted by the weight of time, and something more… a metallic aftertaste at the back of the throat, like the taste of an old coin or dried blood.