In the middle of a hostile stretch of sand, a silhouette wandered. An invisible clock marked the passing seconds until the collapse of his body.
On foot, he walked without pause for ten, twenty minutes in a straight line, paying attention to every detail he could absorb. He needed shelter, no matter how small.
Naturally, he found none. His brain felt as though it were cooking inside his skull, his breathing caught fire, and his muscles failed to obey his commands more often than before.
'Am I really going to die right after entering?! I didn't even have time to try!'
The anger and frustration born of his current condition were justified. The scenery offered no hint of how it was meant to end him, with no people or creatures in sight. This was not an execution. Unable to take another step, his left leg gave out, dropping him to one knee in the pristine sand.
Hot sweat burned his eyes, his muffled breathing only worsening the discomfort beneath the mask. Bargaining with himself, he closed his eyes for a few seconds, believing it to be nothing more than a brief pause.
It was only then that he noticed an anomaly. Even in darkness, a soft glow, almost imperceptible, lingered at the edge of his peripheral vision. With his eyes still closed, he turned his head, finally "seeing" its source, like a ghostly lighthouse clinging to existence, refusing to be swallowed by shadow.
He held his breath, finally understanding what light his attribute referred to. When he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but desert sand once more, but it no longer mattered. For the first time since arriving, he had a path to follow.
He clenched his teeth and forced his body upright again. The things the human body could do when driven by the will to survive were impressive. But the desire to walk alone would not be enough. His stamina was at its limit. He would die before reaching anything.
Closing his eyes once more, his mind focused on his aspect, searching for the connection it promised with the world. The sensation was new, his senses expanding beyond the corporeal limits of flesh. The line was there, flickering, slipping from his inexperienced grasp.
He seized it with all his strength and, for a moment, he was no longer just Giovanni, but the very sand beneath his feet.
'Move!'
The ground began to flow in a single direction. Without taking a step, he started moving toward the light, carried along with the sand itself.
It was now or never. His feet moved rapidly, accelerating in tandem with the power. In mere seconds, the difference became tangible, Giovanni covering the distance of five steps in one. Accompanied only by his shadow, he ran until he could no longer feel his legs.
He saw the light growing closer. The progress was minimal, almost nonexistent, but it was the only proof that his effort was not in vain. Seconds and minutes lost all meaning. He could not stop, because he knew that if he dared to rest even for a moment, he would never rise again.
When he opened his eyes, he noticed something he would have dismissed as a mirage not long ago.
'That can't be… there!'
A fissure in the sand, easily overlooked if he had not been facing it directly. The darkness within would normally inspire fear of the unknown, but to the desperate, shadows were the closest thing to paradise.
Throwing himself forward, the sand carried him the rest of the way inside. He rolled down the slope, his entire body screaming in pain with every collision against stone, until he finally came to a stop inside a shallow cave that extended only a few meters beneath the surface.
Sand constantly poured inside, driven by the wind, but he gave it little thought in that moment.
"Haha… ha! I did it! I did it! Hahahaha!"
His voice tore at his parched throat, but he could not contain the euphoria. His chances of survival were still minimal. Without food and, more importantly, water, he would not live another two days.
The first necessity to overcome that despicable nightmare had been secured. Temporary shelter. He dragged himself to the nearest wall, sitting with difficulty as he stared at his runes.
[Pilgrim] had undeniably saved his life. He never imagined he would be so profoundly grateful for the power to move sand. Now that he had time to focus on something beyond escaping the sun, it was the perfect moment to explore the limits of his aspect.
He extended his hand, willing the sand to wrap around his finger. As before, it responded, floating through the air until it completely covered his skin. Attempting the same with the rocky layer of the cave floor failed.
Giovanni was not incapable of extending his senses to the stone, but it seemed to reject his authority, as if he were too weak to command it.
'So that's my limit. Great. At best, I can throw sand in someone's eyes.'
With no time for self-deprecating thoughts, he focused on the interesting part of his power. Whenever he connected to the environment, it felt as though it became invisible limbs of his body, moving at his will.
Closing his eyes and pushing toward the limits of his ability, he realized he did not even need to see the sand he wished to move. As long as it was within a limited range, he could feel it beneath him and above the surface alike.
He was no genius, but he sensed immense potential in that ability. If he could master those expanded senses, he could detect distant footsteps, subterranean threats, and uncover hidden passages.
The greatest obstacle was his inability to focus on more than one location at a time. He needed complete concentration to clearly perceive a single portion of terrain.
Just imagining having to process information from dozens of meters in every direction sent chills down his spine.
"It's not like I have much else to do."
Leaving was impossible, and there was nothing inside. He needed a productive way to use his time, and what he desperately needed was to refine his pitiful abilities.
He took a deep breath and, instead of connecting to a single point, extended his senses in all directions at once. The result was catastrophic, creating overwhelming noise that disoriented him within seconds. The pulsing pain was as real as any physical wound.
'Lesson learned… magical or not, limits exist.'
After waiting a few minutes, he tried again, starting small.
He first focused on the sand beneath his left hand, willing it to rise and gather into a sphere. While maintaining it, he split his focus to his right hand, repeating the process.
Divided focus demanded more effort, but it remained within his limits. It was only when he attempted to reshape the sand in his right hand into a triangle that everything collapsed.
"Damn it! Not even close…"
Performing two identical tasks simultaneously was entirely different from creating and manipulating different shapes.
'This is going to be a long road, my God.'
On the horizon, light grew scarce, heralding the end of the scorching doom. Hours passed, and Giovanni barely moved, conserving every drop of energy as though it were sacred.
The uninterrupted hours of practice were productive in their own way. The most noticeable improvement was the speed at which he could focus on a portion of the terrain and move it immediately.
At first, he needed to close his eyes and concentrate. Now, as long as he could see the sand and it was close, he could manipulate it with a quick thought.
It was nothing impressive, but being able to use the same trick to accelerate across the sand without blinding himself was enough.
The same applied to his "sixth sense" of the terrain. He kept his eyes open while vaguely sensing the sand in one direction.
The clarity of the information was so faint it could barely be considered more than a blur, but it was the first step in the process, and he would not complain.
What he could not achieve, even after hours, was performing entirely different tasks with sand at the same time.
He had reached the point where shapes no longer completely collapsed, but one would immediately become a floating pile while the other remained somewhat stable.
Exhausted from repeating the same exercises for hours, he decided to end the session. The temperature was steadily dropping, and while it was still tolerable, it showed no sign of stopping.
He crawled up the gentle slope out of the cave and beheld a world utterly different from before. The violence and intensity of the winds had subsided, replaced by an unsettling silence. Night had not yet fallen, but only a few minutes remained.
He planned to continue walking through the night, but was quickly reconsidering. No threats were visible, yet his instincts screamed against advancing into the darkness.
It took little thought to understand the danger. He could not be the only creature hiding from the scorching sun during the day. Other prey… and hunters would surely emerge.
'If I can't stay outside during the day or the night, what am I supposed to do?! This is stupid!'
He vented his frustration into the void, lowering his head as a bitter sense of defeat filled his mouth. Before he could spiral further, something beautiful and delicate descended slowly from the sky: a snowflake.
One after another followed, at first like sparse drops in a dry riverbed, but within minutes they fell relentlessly. The clear sky, devoid of clouds moments ago, transformed in the blink of an eye.
As the heavens vanished behind an impenetrable layer of gray clouds, the temperature plunged into the negatives, a grim omen of lethal cold.
Giovanni ignored the implications and new dangers. His eyes were fixed on a single thing: water.
It was impossible to determine its purity or safety, but dying while trying was better than the alternative. He opened his mouth and let the snow collect on his tongue.
His body heat melted it slowly. His tongue burned from the cold, but the result was worth the pain. For the first time since entering that nightmare, Giovanni drank water.
The sensation was sublime, the best thing he had ever felt in his life. He repeated the process again and again until he had swallowed the equivalent of a single sip. He would have continued, but forced himself to stop.
He needed to conserve body heat, and beyond the risks of contamination, he could not risk hypothermia.
Night fell, bringing a blizzard with it. Visibility dropped to mere inches, and the cold was so intense that any ordinary human would freeze within minutes outside.
The thick, excessive clothing that had suffocated him earlier became his sole hope of surviving the night.
'The water problem is partially solved, but I still have no source of food.'
He had nothing but stones as weapons. Nothing living moved during the day, and he could see nothing at night. It felt like an unsolvable problem.
Lost in thought, he took several seconds to notice something bizarre in the distance. Not one or two… but dozens of small points of light, like fireflies over a swamp.
"What… what is happening?"
The kind of light born of flame.