“Alright, we’re here,” Bjorn said as both of them came to a stop near the crest of a tall dune, a good few hundred meters away from the base of an even larger one looming in the distance.

  Peeling himself off his uncle’s back, Deacon landed on the dune with both feet, knees bending to steady himself as a wave of vertigo rolled through him. He grounded himself, keeping the contents of his stomach that had threatened to spill out toward the latter half of their journey still in his stomach.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Deacon looked up to see that Bjorn was already making his way down the slope, calmly sliding down the face of the dune by leaning back, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat.

  Quickly jogging down the dune to catch up to his uncle, Deacon then asked, “So what’s the name of the bazaar we’re going to?” once he caught up and began to slide down the side of the dune beside him.

  “Souk al-Erg,” Bjorn replied, smirking beneath his mask.

  “Bazaar of the Dune Sea,” Deacon translated into English, eyebrows drawing together. “That’s… a bit on the nose, don’t you think?”

  Bjorn chuckled softly, never taking his eyes off the towering dune in front of them. From the pouch at his back, he pulled a bejeweled badge bearing a golden vulture with two gem-like eyes; one blue and the other green.

  Raising the badge above their heads and he began to wave it above their heads with it facing the massive dune.

  Noticing his uncle waving the badge above both of their heads, Deacon stared at the dune in front of them in confusion while focusing on coating his feet with mana to better his grip his feet had on the sand.

  A minute later, as they reached the bottom of the dune, Bjorn finally lowered his hand and put the badge away. Deacon opened his mouth to ask who, exactly, his uncle had been waving to, when with a barely audible rumble, at the foot of the massive dune directly across from them, the sand began to shudder.

  Roughly a hundred meters away, a mineshaft-like entrance began to push itself up from the base of the enormous dune and stood across from them.

  Deacon’s eyes narrowed. “The fuck?”

  “Put this on,” Bjorn said, reaching back into his pouch and pulling out two black filtration masks, handing one to Deacon while putting on the other for himself.

  Item Name:Reinforced Filtration Mask

  Type:Rarity:Description:A black filtration mask fitted with layered enchanted filter pads and reinforced by thin metal plates across the exterior. This mask protects the wearer from most low-grade fumes, strong scents, airborne poisons, and the like with its basic respiratory protection.

  Effects:Requirements:

  “Can I have these?” Deacon asked as he quickly put on the mask. “The one I have isn’t as good.”

  “Why else would I give it to you if not for you to keep it?” Bjorn chuckled before nudging his head toward the front of the dune, adding, “And as for why I was waving the badge —look ahead. Do you see the guards?”

  Deacon frowned behind his mask, not seeing anyone even remotely close as they neared the dune or any markings atop the sand of the dune.

  After being unable to spot the supposed guards with his eyes, he activated Blood Sense

  Forty-seven people lay concealed within the face of the massive dune they were approaching, buried under layers of sand and holding perfectly still. And judging by the way their red-silhouetted arms were positioned, Deacon could tell they had various types of ranged weaponry trained on both his uncle and himself.

  [Human Lv ??]

  Deacon thought, snapping his gaze forward and doing his best to look like he hadn’t just uncovered an entire platoon of Tier 2 guards hidden under the sand. At the same time, he prayed the one he’d Identified hadn’t felt the skill ping him as he followed his uncle toward the now fully standing mineshaft.

  Keeping pace with his uncle, and now only a few feet from the mineshaft entrance, Deacon got a clear look at it. Sandstone pillars reinforced with pale wooden beams framed the doorway, along with greyish symbols etched along its outer top lip.

  Deacon asked himself as he tried to decipher the symbols atop the mineshaft doorway – he hadn’t ever come across symbols that looked like that before.

  “It’s a ward sequence to see if you hold any hostile intent against the city,” his uncle explained, seeing that Deacon was mumbling to himself as they neared the entrance and followed his gaze to be on the enchanted script etched onto the doorway.

  ; Deacon mused to himself as both he and his uncle stepped into the mineshaft.

  Running a hand along one of the wooden beams sloping down with the tunnel, Deacon noted that it was only just wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side.

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  “So… how do carts get through here?” Deacon asked, channeling mana into the Mana Lantern at his hip and brightening the tunnel ahead of them. “Sure, merchants have Spatial Bags, but they still need carts for big loads.”

  “The guards didn’t see us with a cart,” Bjorn said plainly.

  Making their way down the tunnel with only Deacon’s lantern giving off enough light to see more than a few steps ahead, the air stayed dry and quiet enough that every shuffle of sand under their boots felt louder than it should have.

  Neither of them said anything, and Deacon kept glancing at Bjorn just to check if his posture had straightened even a little, but if anything, the aloofness he previously had vanished entirely.

  In its place, his uncle looked far more guarded in his posture, even with the mask covering his face, Deacon could tell that his uncle was entirely serious.

  Glancing at his uncle as they walked down the tunnel, Deacon’s vision blurred. For a few seconds, the world stitched itself into overlapping scenes — his uncle’s form wavered, and the tunnel melted away, replaced by the living room of the cabin he and his father once lived in.

  For a brief moment, he felt himself reclining on something soft, and both his uncle’s and his father’s voices echoed through his mind.

  “Mattias, you can’t be serious about going through with this,” he heard Bjorn’s voice coming from a figure standing in the same posture his uncle had now.

  “I have no choice, Bjorn,” his father’s voice answered, somber but resolute. Deacon couldn’t see him clearly, but he recognized the tone instantly. “If I don’t do this, then we lose what few of us are still alive.”

  “We don’t have to push now,” Bjorn shot back, anger rising in his voice. “We can wait for the next solstice and push for our people to get signed with the alliance then. We learned Jack Ross is willing to back us. With the others, that’s at least sixty-five percent of the council.”

  His uncle’s voice hardened. “If you do this… you’re leaving Deacon to fend for himself with no one to protect him. That’s no different than abandoning him.”

  A younger image of his father stepped into view, much younger than the hologram of his father that he’d seen on the morning Deacon had received his Class, and getting in Bjorn’s face. “Watch your tongue, Bjorn.”

  “Am I wrong?” Bjorn growled back, leaning closer and baring his teeth at Deacon’s father as his right hand splayed, fingers curling into a claw-like shape. “You push now, and you abandon both Deacon and any chance we had at a truce. We both know you just want to push as fast as possible because you want to leave the Tower to get to Skadi and tear apart the people who took her from you… but if you do that, you abandon Deacon – he still has eight more years left till he can get his Class.”

  A heavy tension thickened the air between the two men — only to be cut by the rustle of sheets from what Deacon assumed was the couch in the cabin’s living room. Both men snapped their heads toward the sound, toward him, and Deacon saw a pair of small hands enter his vision and scramble to pull a wool blanket he was covered with, over his head.

  Then, just as quickly as the wool blanket covered his vision and two sets of heavy steps began to make their way towards him, something began to rumble at his side. As the intensity of the rumble grew, the scene began to warp and blur, until Deacon found himself back in the tunnel, walking side by side with his uncle.

  Deacon sucked in a shaky breath, tearing his gaze away from his uncle and back toward the tunnel ahead, its end finally coming into view.

  The rumbling at his hip grew more insistent. Glancing down, he realized it was coming from inside his Spatial Sling Bag.

  Thinking it was Sam or Jass sending him another reel or something equally stupid, he reached for his manaphone — glancing awkwardly at Bjorn to make sure he wouldn’t get snapped at for checking it. After what had just happened to him seconds ago, he desperately needed something even borderline funny to take his mind off of it.

  Seeing that his uncle did not so much as give him a glance, Deacon unlocked his manaphone and stared at it in confusion – the notification wasn’t from his friends, it was from his uncle.

  [From: Uncle Bjorn]Do not call me anything other than Order Master until we arrive back at the Knight Order. Do not take off your mask or pendant; if you lose either, you will get poisoned, and both your eyes and race will be revealed. Do not wander. Even if I signal for you to move freely, you must remain where I can still keep you within sight. Stay calm and remain focused.

  A chill shuddered down Deacon's spine as he read through his uncle's message.

  He thought, keeping his breathing even so it wouldn’t be obvious he’d just gotten blindsided by a warning like that. First, that random fuck-ass mind trip that I just had a second ago, and not this?

  He kept his face neutral and slipped the manaphone back into his Sling Bag like nothing happened, forcing his shoulders not to tense, and his eyes remained focused on the nearing end of the tunnel.

  A moment later, they stepped out.

  A line of guards stood on either side of the exit, perfectly at attention. Each one was wrapped head-to-toe in sand-colored leather armor with matching veils that left only their eyes visible, with spears in hand. None of them acknowledged Bjorn or Deacon as the pair walked past and stepped onto the sandstone balcony.

  Behind them, the tunnel sealed itself with barely a whisper, sand folding shut and smoothing over as if the entrance had never existed.

  Following after Bjorn onto the sandstone balcony, Deacon moved up beside him and finally saw the full spread of the Eastern Wing below. It looked nothing like the cramped, poor underground bazaar he’d pictured it to be — this was an actual city he was looking at.

  An entire multi-layered city carved into the inside of the dune, with walkways branching in every direction and sloping downward in stacked tiers. Rows of enchanted lanterns lit every level, their glow mixing with the lights of countless vendor stalls scattered throughout the cavern.

  People were everywhere. Humans, beastkin, dwarves, along with several races Deacon didn’t recognize, moved across the ground and between the different layers of the city, some wearing masks while others did not. Crates were dragged or pushed by hand, floated through the air with spells, or carried on shoulders. Food stalls blasted waves of heat from iron burners shaped like squat clay furnaces, the smells reaching his filtration mask only to be scrubbed away before they could reach him.

  As he let his gaze wander upward toward the curvature of the carved sandstone walls, he caught the faintest distortion in the air, like a thin layer of discolored haze drifting several meters above the ground levels where the lantern light bent slightly around it.

  Deacon wondered, but he didn’t react outwardly; his uncle had told him not to remove the mask, and if there were toxins mixed into the air that could visibly be seen and seemingly allowed, what other toxins were there in here that were invisible to his eyes?

  Pulling his attention away from his musing of the city, he nodded at Bjorn and followed him down the narrow staircase along the wall.

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