Chapter 30: Search

As the sun dipped below the horizon, the vast, sandy expanse was bathed in fading hues of amber and crimson.

A solitary figure stood at its edge, motionless save for the faint ripple of a cloak swaying in the cooling desert wind.

Kael's cloak fabric draping him like the shroud of a grim reaper. His hollow eye sockets glinted faintly as they scanned the barren dunes, now steeped in the encroaching darkness.

"Where can I check?" he muttered, his voice low and rasping, carried briefly before being swallowed by the desert's emptiness.

The shifting sands beneath his legs whistled with each step as he moved forward, leaving faint footprint that the wind hurriedly began to erase.

His gaze swept the endless dunes, jagged rock outcroppings, and occasional dry shrubs that barely clung to life.

"No safe place in sight," Kael said, his bony fingers twitching as they clutched the edges of his cloak. "Everywhere is open."

The desert, once bathed in relentless sunlight, was now a realm of growing shadow. Darkness crept steadily across the land, curling around the dunes like a hunter stalking its prey. The air had begun to chill, its icy tendrils brushing against Kael's exposed bones.

"I need to be quicker," he said to himself, his pace quickening. Each step sent small avalanches of sand trickling down the sides of the dunes, the sound soft but oddly loud in the silence of the night.

The wind picked up, carrying with it faint, unearthly noises. Kael froze mid-step, his hooded head snapping to the side as he listened. Shadows danced and shifted across the dunes, their shapes distorted by the uncertain light of the twilight sky.

"Something is close," he murmured, his hand drifting instinctively toward the scythe strapped to his back. The air felt heavier now, the silence pressing in like a physical weight.

The growls came again low, guttural, and distant, but unmistakably real. Kael stiffened, and he turned his hollow gaze toward the horizon.

The darkness ahead seemed alive, moving and writhing as though hiding something just beyond his vision. Whatever it was, it was watching him.