It was not merely an aesthetic change. The red sand emanated a terrifying, pestilent energy. There were few options besides moving forward, so contact with it was inevitable.
Even though no visible effect manifested, the feeling that the desert wanted to consume him alive was unmistakable.
He chose to slow his pace, remaining alert to every movement in his surroundings. The environment was quiet, just as hot as before, but now far more diverse.
The gigantic ruins formed by fragments of the tower slowly sank, buried by sand constantly shifted by the wind, yet they still shaped an apocalyptic landscape.
Would his own world one day become like this as well? Just disfigured fragments, forgotten by time? Merely imagining the orphanage in ruins, reduced to rubble and splintered wood, made his stomach churn.
"It's just a nightmare, you idiot. None of this is real."
It was better to reinforce his conviction that everything was fantasy than to allow himself to be distracted. That luxury belonged only to the strong, something Giovanni was not.
His mobile sand shelter finally reached the first ruin. Because it was slanted, it provided shade from the sun, but that was not what the boy was looking for.
Since arriving there, he had only encountered natural formations, which were poor in resources, to say the least. As unlikely as it was to find anything valuable in a decaying place, it was worth trying.
He expanded his senses, attempting to probe beneath the mounds of sand invading through cracks and accumulating inside, only to notice a strange anomaly.
"This is new… what is this made of? Seriously."
So far, nothing had been able to block his sensory power. Even rocks he could not move were not an obstacle.
Yet when he tried to scan the sand, his senses were constantly interfered with by the mixed fragments.
It was not mere resistance. It was complete nullification. Giving up on refined probing, he plunged his hands into the sand, searching for the small areas where he had felt his perception blocked.
Most of the ruin's fragments were too large, with irregular shapes, impractical for use as a weapon by a scrawny boy.
It took some persistence to finally hit the jackpot. A smaller, elongated shard was the closest thing to a dagger in that hell.
Giovanni's strength might have been that of an ordinary human, but that thing could certainly punch a hole through a beast better than any knife back home.
"If I grip it too hard, it'll cut my fingers too."
He swallowed nervously, fearing his own improvised weapon.
The distance between the dune he had climbed and the ruined city on the horizon was not trivial. At maximum speed, he could reach the gates in three hours, but haste was the enemy of survival.
At the same time, if he took too long, night would fall, and if he were to make an educated guess, whatever emerged in the darkness of those red sands would be even worse than the cold.'
'A middle ground, then. Great.'
His goal was to arrive in four, five hours at most. That was assuming he encountered no danger or unforeseen events along the way.
With no time to lose, he tucked himself beneath the sand shelter and shot across the sands, keeping his speed just above a brisk walk. He would end this nightmare today, one way or another.
The first hour passed peacefully, but the omen of something terrible grew on the horizon. At first harmless, easy to ignore, but as it covered more of the sky, it became an inevitable disaster.
Giovanni struggled to notice it, camouflaged against the gray, lifeless sky, but the strengthening winds forced him to pay closer attention.
It was more violent than any storm in the waking world. His face drained of color just imagining that thing soon being upon him.
Early in the nightmare, when he did not yet know about his runes, he had seen massive sandstorms in the sky, but he had never needed to endure one during the days he stayed hidden.
He did not want to assume the worst, but he felt he was charging headlong into their home.
'To hell with caution! I need to speed up! Now!'
Escaping its devastation entirely was a vain hope. He only needed to get as far as possible from its center. There was no protection or shelter that would save him from being ground into a pool of blood.
The shelter reached its maximum speed, equivalent to a boy running. It would still take time for the calamity to catch up; he had a chance.
Even while focusing on moving forward, he could not help glancing at the things that appeared as he advanced. Numerous banners, most destroyed to the point of being unrecognizable.
Others were made of a different fabric, more durable and immune to time. They proudly displayed the image of a sun-bathed monolith surrounded by river waves.
Colossal black arrows adorned the desert's expanse, embedded everywhere like towers. He could only imagine war machines firing such things, yet he saw none on the castle walls.
'There's no sign of the things it killed either…'
It was halfway there when everything went out of control. The winds struck him like a truck, shattering his balance instantly. His control over sand was futile before nature's fury. Whenever he tried to bind the grains together, they were violently torn apart.
For the first time in a long while, he was exposed to the sun's rays, albeit at reduced intensity thanks to the clouded skies. Having already tempted fate too much, he needed to find shelter immediately.
In the distance, one of the many ruins seemed like the perfect wall to place between himself and the winds.
Giovanni used the same strategy of running while accelerating the sand beneath his feet, now also struggling constantly to maintain balance.
'Almost there!'
The finish line was within reach. He should have distanced himself enough from the storm to be at its edges. The ruins had stood there for years; they should survive one more gale.
But the wind intensified once more, carrying far more than just sand. The boy's body became like a puppet pulled by strings, beginning to roll eastward with no way to stop.
Giovanni tried to keep himself from being dragged farther, forcing the sand around his body to sink and pull him down, but it was useless. At this pace, he would be carried away without resistance.
As he rose and fell repeatedly, he scanned every direction frantically, searching for something to hold onto.
Luckily, there was one. Unluckily, it lay directly in his collision path. Seconds later, his body slammed violently into a ruin partially buried in sand.
Fortunately, the surface was smooth and flat rather than a heap of sharp stones, perhaps the floor of some level long ago, but the impact was just as brutal.
His consciousness flickered out for a moment. His neck and back burned, his skin slick with fresh blood. That was only the beginning of the pain, as the red sand striking him at high speeds acted like razors.
It pierced fabric and flesh with equal ease, opening cuts along his arms, legs, and face. The agony of being alive was overwhelming, with no sign of relief. Wanting to avoid being shredded further, his will connected with the sand.
His teeth nearly cracked as his jaw clenched under the strain of moving so much sand at once, pushing his body sideways toward one edge of the ruin.
He managed to cling to the ledge and finally shield himself from the sand and winds. His lowered head and hunched body reflected his dire state. Tears streamed endlessly, from both pain and frustration.
'Just a little more… it's almost over.'
He repeated it in his mind like a mantra. When he reached the city, it would be the final stop.If there was any consolation in that disaster, it was that his energy had been preserved. He could have sprinted at full speed from the start and almost entirely avoided the winds, but thirst and hunger would have exacted their toll.
Nothing guaranteed he would find food or water in that new biome, so he had to consider the worst-case scenario.
In complete silence, he waited, hoping nature would show mercy and that the storm would soon pass. With nothing else to do, he stared at the landscape before him, reduced to just a few meters by the poor visibility.
That was when he noticed something simple, yet equally sinister: an arm.It was not bleached bones or rotting flesh, but a perfectly preserved limb emerging from the sand, fingers stretched toward Giovanni.
Its skin was smooth, delicate, and sun-kissed, like that of a beautiful maiden begging for help. Then he noticed the crucial detail: a kind of red, pustulent infection.
Predominantly around the shoulder, it seemed to grow beneath the skin, forming bumps throughout the flesh. Every inch of it was infected, though it was hard to notice at first glance.
His decision was to remain completely still, praying he would not be noticed. The worst thing he could do was face one of the nightmare creatures in his current condition.
But he had already been noticed, and the chance to choose had been stolen.
The rest of the abomination's body finally emerged, revealing a deformed chimera. What had once been a scorpion was fused with human limbs. Its legs were partially replaced by arms, areas where the chitinous carapace turned into bleeding bone.
Its appearance was reflected in its physical abilities, its movements awkward and nearly dysfunctional.
A single stinger, made from a human spine, served as the creature's weapon. The two opponents faced each other in the cramped space of the storm's small island of safety.
In the next instant, its arms flexed and, with incomprehensible strength, propelled it toward the boy.
Instinctively, Giovanni threw himself aside, letting the stinger's tip strike the ruin wall without leaving a scratch. The limb moved like a serpent, striking repeatedly at anything within reach.
Unable to walk, it relied on leaps to reach its target, which was the only reason Giovanni could dodge its predictable movements.
"Shit!"
About to dodge again, he misstepped on the uneven ground. His body fell backward into the sand, and the scorpion did not miss the opportunity. The vile sight of the beast about to impale his head was avoided by a hair's breadth.
Rolling aside, the stinger plunged into the sand.
'Don't let go!'
He forced the sand to grip tightly, holding the enemy's weapon in place for one extra second. That window was all Giovanni needed to raise the shard and drive it into one of the vertebral rings forming the stinger.
The stone penetrated and split the bone in two with ease. The shock of having part of its body severed distracted the scorpion, allowing the boy to kick its dog-sized body away with all his strength.
The distance gained was negligible, but in that moment, it was enough, exposing the beast to the storm winds. It was carried away in mere seconds, vanishing into the distance.
There was nothing deadlier than the climate itself, so he had only used it to his advantage.
His erratic breathing and pale face showed no triumph. After a few seconds, a voice echoed in his mind.
[You have slain an awakened beast, Grafted Damsel]
It was the second time he had killed one of those aberrations.