A week later, the searing winds of the Qadiran midday whipped at Farnaz’s face, stinging with pulverized sandstone. Her personal vanguard, a hand-picked dozen of the Citadel’s most hardened A-Rank specialists, marched grimly behind her. Their plated armor, polished to a dull sheen, absorbed the heat like hungry parasites. Grit ground beneath their sabatons as they forced their way through the baking salt-flats of Zohal. “Vice-Guildmaster,” a voice rasped from behind her, “Our water skins are hissing dry. The residual discharge from that blast baked the floor for twenty klicks.” Veteran scout Danesh spat dry phlegm, squinting through heat mirages. “We should consider a tactical retreat. This heat… it’s unnatural.” Farnaz kept marching. “Unnatural is what killed Jalil, Danesh.” Her gaze stayed locked on the horizon, where dry flats buckled beneath violent thermal plumes. Pressure poured off the distant oasis, a brutal thrum that set her molars vibrating. Then the sand vanished. Red stalks surged skyward, their sapphire canopies blotting out the sky. Mud squelched underfoot, slick with disk-shaped fungi broad as bucklers. Pitcher pods gaped across a dry gulch, dripping digestive bile into damp loam. Steam clung to their breastplates like wet wool, thick with the rot of foreign nectar. Danesh choked on his canteen. “By the Sun’s Forge… what in the hell took root out here?” Farnaz felt a cold dread seep into her bones, quickly replaced by a burning certainty. This wasn’t a natural phenomenon. This was the signature of the monstrosity that wore Jalil's skin. This was the power that had consumed her Jalil. They cut into the dense undergrowth. Serrated fronds rasped against steel plate, while violet moss smeared luminous slime across their greaves. Farnaz halted mid-stride, her toe catching on a blackened clump buried in mulch. She knelt, carefully brushing away the dark earth. It was a Vanguard badge, scorched and melted around the edges, but undeniably Jalil’s. The silver eagle emblem, warped by heat, leaked a dull gold gleam that sparked across the dirt. It was the same badge she’d given him herself, a small token of encouragement before his exile. Her stomach twisted into a knot of rage. The monster hadn’t just killed him; it had desecrated his memory, taken his very essence and twisted it into a plaything. “It’s him,” she whispered, her voice rough, “It’s *using* him. Mocking him.” She crushed the badge in her gauntleted hand, the divine power singing against her skin, making her teeth ache. “This… *thing*… it won’t get away with it.” Meanwhile, a few miles away, at the center of the impossible oasis, Jalil squinted at a flock of oversized desert crows. The black-feathered nuisances were pecking at his freshly sowed patch of Arid-Blaze Peppers, scattering the precious seeds he’d spent half the morning meticulously planting. Pishak, the housecat, was curled on a sun-warmed rock nearby, meticulously cleaning a paw, a low, rumbling purr vibrating through his tiny frame. He kept one yellow eye half-open, watching Jalil with a terror only he truly understood. “Useless sky-rats,” Jalil muttered, brandishing his trowel. “Zero respect for basic agriculture.” The burlap scarecrow had rotted in Tuesday's fog. He glanced at Pishak, noting the shed draconic scales dusting the stone—thick as shale and sharp as split flint. “Aha,” Jalil declared, picking up a handful of the shed scales. They glittered, catching the light like tiny opals. “Perfect.” He found a length of dried vine and, with a few deft twists, strung the scales together, creating a crude, shimmering strand. “A windchime. That’ll rattle their ears.” Jalil whistled an off-key tavern tune, oblivious as Pishak flattened his ears and froze mid-lick. Jalil ambled over to the patch, knotting the vine to a thick, purple-barked shrub that had sprouted by his hybrid radishes. A humid gust caught the assembly. *Ding. Clink.* Space warped. The purple shrub groaned, its trunk flattening into a wafer before atomizing into violet powder. A ten-foot ring of turf dropped twelve inches, compacted instantly into dense bedrock. Jalil tapped the new stone with his sandal. “Dry rot. Cheap desert timber.” He shook his head and knelt back into the dirt to plant peppers. Pishak, flattened against the rock, his fur bristling, watched the newly created gravity well. The scent of ozone and crushed earth filled the air. His purr, when it finally resumed, was a ragged, high-pitched whine. A mile out, the strike team crept through the canopy. Danesh swept a bronze divining rod before every footfall. The needle spun wildly, clicking like a manic beetle. “Hold!” the scout hissed, watching the rod flare white-hot. “Spatial distortion ahead. Off the charts.” An arrogant A-Rank skirmisher sneered, pushing past the ranks with drawn scimitars. “It's just thick grass, coward.” He vaulted forward, landing both boots squarely in a patch of broad, purple leaves. *Clink. Ding.* The air imploded with the dry crack of snapping timber. Before the scout could draw breath, gravity doubled, dragging him and thirty cubic feet of topsoil straight down into a compressed crater. No blood. No yell. Just a smooth, ten-foot stone sinkhole, bordered by a single, unblemished root vegetable. Farnaz drew her greatsword, stepping up to the perimeter. Beyond the trees sat a small mud hut. Golden light leaked from its chimney, bending the horizon into a dizzying dome of quiet, domestic pressure.

The Level 99 Windchime