It was dawn.
Not dawn as one imagines it in a world of dew and woods, but the dawn of another world: a solar assault, a golden intrusion that did not merely tint the shadows but devoured them. It was the constant of that world, the only immutable truth since the boy had been cast into that exile of sand and light. Not a day began without that same, violent pulse of light—a golden throb that filtered through the coarse fabric of the tent and drove itself into his eyelids like a fiery dart. The sun did not rise: it erupted.
A silent explosion, a shockwave of light and heat that set the dune crests to the east ablaze, giving life to an immense, mute expanse of ruthless beauty. A sea of sand with no apparent wind, yet alive, always alive: it moved like a sluggish torrent, sliding in tiny avalanches, as if breathing with a slow, primordial lung. Waiting for something. Or perhaps, someone.
When the boy opened his eyes, the glare was so aggressive it made the thin canvas of the tent as transparent as opaque glass. He pulled himself up with a hoarse groan, thick with sleep and aridity, instinctively bringing his forearm to his forehead like a fragile shield. Every morning was like this. Every awakening was a small, inevitable act of violence between the world and his fragile, human consciousness.
The acts of dressing were now mechanical, almost liturgical, learned out of necessity in a place that did not forgive slowness: the coarse cloth shirt, the crooked seams cutting into his shoulders, the stiff trousers, the light cloak—his only semblance of protection and anonymity. He extinguished the last trace of uncertainty by pressing his bare feet firmly onto the ground, still cold and compact from the night. He lifted the flap of the tent just enough and stepped out.
The sand greeted him with a hot breath, already heavy with promises of hell despite it being the coolest hour. The desert was not a place; it was a state of being.
He was not at all surprised—and this, a detail that at least did not throw him off, was reassuring—to see that Kaelis was already awake.
The man never truly slept. Or at least, not as humans understood it. He seemed always present, a sentinel placed there since the beginning of time, not a mere traveler. His vigil was an extension of the darkness, an eternal watchfulness.
On the edge of the great boulder they used as shelter, motionless as a figure carved in granite, Kaelis stared at the horizon. He did not turn. He did not move. He gave no sign of having noticed the boy's presence. The dawn, in its impetuousness, enveloped him like a mantle, sculpting his figure into a dark, almost unreal profile. He seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it.
His heavy black coat, the very color of the deepest night, fell stiffly down his legs to his thick leather boots. The fabric was marked by a myriad of tears mended with dark thread, abrasions, and folds as hard as ancient scars. There wasn't an inch of his attire that did not tell, in its silence, of a dangerous and relentless journey.
Under the coat, a simple black shirt, open just enough to expose the base of his neck and collarbones. A gray strap, made of a material the boy could not identify, crossed his chest, and from its buckles hung two small, worn, chipped metal cylinders. When Kaelis moved, these cylinders would strike one another with a rhythmic, hypnotic clicking, as if they too were instruments destined to produce a secret sound—a counterpoint to the silence of the desert. The sound of a clock without hands.
Kaelis's hands, always covered by thick, dark leather gloves, moved in a slow, almost ceremonial gesture to adjust the position of his hood. That hood—his signature, his fortress: thick and heavy, it entirely shrouded his face. Nothing filtered from beneath it: no skin, no beard, not the faintest spark of eyes. Only complete darkness, a void that refused to interact with the outside world. And yet—and this remained the deepest mystery—Kaelis saw perfectly through that impossible fabric.
"Good morning... I think. Or is that too optimistic?" the boy whispered, more to force the silence to retreat than to obtain an answer.
Kaelis did not turn.
He continued to scan the horizon, but not with the gaze of one observing a landscape or searching for a landmark. It was a much deeper form of attention. It was as if he were listening to the earth waking up. As if something, far off in the glowing expanse of sand, were speaking only to him, whispering secrets in a pre-verbal tongue.
The boy took two steps forward, brushing aside with the tip of his foot a small pile of sand that the night had caused to slide near the tent. The gesture was nervous, a small rebellion against the oppressive stillness. The wind had not yet decided to blow. The desert was motionless, a colossal animal waiting for the command to wake and hunt.
Then, without any warning, Kaelis spoke. And the question he asked was a sharp blow.
"Do you not think this world makes no sense?"
The sentence hit the boy square in the stomach, an unexpected punch. For an instant, he remained completely still, the air trapped in his lungs. He was not prepared for such philosophical disintegration before coffee.
He breathed deeply, the hot sand filling his nostrils, then attempted an uncertain, almost ironic smile: "First of all, Kaelis, I bid you good morning again. And then... I don't understand. Why do you say it makes no sense?"
The man did not turn. His voice came out flat, without echoes of emotion or melody, like the sound of metal dropped on the ground and immediately muted by the sand.
"Because what we see, what we hear, what we believe we understand and hold tight... in the end, it might be nothing. Only chaos. Only white noise. A web of screams that leads to no symphony, that has no keystone, no meaning."
He paused briefly, and the silence clung again, denser than before. It was a silence that contained all the questions of the universe.
Then he added, with the quiet certainty of one stating a cosmic obviousness: "Perhaps we only believed that all this had a meaning out of fear of admitting the void."
These were words that would destabilize anyone who still held a shred of faith in order. But above all, they were dangerous in the morning, when the mind is naked and vulnerable, having just risen from the mists of sleep.
The boy approached, an uncontrollable impulse for connection pushing him to place a hand on his shoulder. Beneath the thick fabric, he felt the rigidity of the muscle, taut as a cord. Kaelis was taller by a couple of inches, but that height was enough to make him appear not only imposing but inaccessible.
"Forgive me," the man murmured, almost tonelessly, the word seeming to come from a very distant place. It was strange how such depth of thought could coexist with such a lack of emphasis.
"Now come. I will tell you what you want to know. You have waited long enough."
The boy was taken aback. Confused. The night before, Kaelis had been silent, closed off, almost hostile to dialogue. Now, instead, he was speaking. And he wasn't just speaking; he was finally beginning to explain the world that had swallowed him. He was opening the first drawer of this world's secrets.
They both walked toward the now-extinguished hearth, a circle of ash and burnt sand. The boy sat down, crossing his legs, and struggled to calm the emotional turmoil churning in his chest. This sudden calm from Kaelis was more unsettling than his usual coldness.
From the desert, the first forms of life specific to that place began to emerge, timid and swift: lizards as thin as strands of molten metal, rigid scorpions advancing in jerks, small spiders with translucent bodies weaving ephemeral webs among the dry bushes. The sun, just high above the edge of the earth, had already turned the coolness into a dry, penetrating heat. The air vibrated.
Kaelis sat beside him. The dead fire was a circle of shadow, a neutral zone between them.
After a few moments, Kaelis broke the rhythm, without preamble:
"So, what do you want to know? Be specific. Do not waste words."
The voice was not cold. It was... normal. If anything, almost indulgent, with a hint of weariness.
The boy took a deep breath, anchoring his thoughts to the only certain thing he remembered.
"Actually, yesterday I asked you a question. It was about our destination. And you didn't answer me."
Kaelis nodded slowly, his hood dipping slightly. "You are right. I did not. I could not."
He raised his gaze upward, as if evoking an ancient name, a memory carved into the sky itself.
"To understand what you ask, you must first accept and know the land upon which you walk. You must know the Fundamental Tone of everything. This is not a world of earth and water. It is a world of Sound and Silence."
He inhaled deeply, and this simple act in Kaelis seemed epic.
"This planet is called Delpharya. It is the Ark of the Nine Tones. It was sculpted, not created, by the Primordial Beat. Long before peoples, kingdoms, or even collective memory existed. Delpharya orbits Oculisiderum, the pulsing star, the Rhythmic Heart. It is from there that energy flows—the Cadence—which marks not just the hours, but the entire Eras of the world."
His covered fingers traced a perfect circle in the air, an invisible symbol laden with meaning.
"Above us, there is only one satellite: Eonir, the Moon of Echoes. Its light is not reflected; it is resonant. It influences magic, prophecies, spirits, and above all, the subtle vibrations we call the Song of Time. When Eonir is silent, magic sleeps. When Eonir sings, reality itself deforms. Its next phase of Full Silence is crucial for us."
He pointed to the horizon, but not at the earth. He pointed to the sky, where a thin luminous rift, almost a scar in the rising blue, cut across the celestial vault. It was a detail the boy had always noticed but had never dared to ask about.
"That is Carcossya, the Broken World. It is not a cloud, not an illusion. It appears as a scar in the sky, and its shadows fall upon the earth at irregular intervals. Some peoples consider them omens of doom. Others, the most ancient, believe it hosts the ancient Dissonances—what remains of a previous universe, devoured by the Gods of Sound because it did not vibrate in harmony."
Then, his gaze returned to the boy, the motionless figure under the hood now appearing like a tribunal.
"And finally... Delpharya has a single, immense continent: Italya. It is not just a name. It is a concept. It is in constant flux, a tectonic plate that dances. The Nine Kingdoms live here, linked and separated at the same time. Each Kingdom vibrates according to a Fundamental Tone inherited from the Nine Primordial Tones. Everything here is tied to a sound, even if the sound is that of Absolute Silence."
He stopped, letting the weight of those words settle.
The boy did not speak. He could not. He remained completely motionless for an indefinite time, his mouth slightly open in a mute gasp, his eyes wide as he tried to assimilate the flood of new cosmology. He felt his skin crawl, as if Kaelis's words had resonated within his own body. His mind raced, but he could not catch his thoughts—they were too big, too new.
Finally, with a voice that seemed to come from another person, he whispered: "Thank you, Kaelis… truly. It's… it's more than I could have hoped for. But I have another question. What is that language you speak sometimes? The one I don't understand. And why, when you speak like you are now, do I understand you? I am speaking my own language, yet you understand me perfectly, without either of us ever having had to learn the other's idiom. How is that possible?"
Kaelis tilted his head slightly, a movement that in the silence seemed as vast as a continental shift. And for a fraction of a second, an almost imperceptible shadow of a fold in the fabric of the hood, the boy had the impression that the man was smiling.
"I am not speaking another language, boy," Kaelis replied. "And neither are you. Not now."
The boy turned pale, the blood draining from his face. "What do you mean 'I am not speaking another language'? I… I am speaking my native tongue! And you, when you speak, you speak yours—presumably that of Delpharya or Italya! How the hell do we understand each other?!"
His hands were trembling. Communication, however magical it might be, was his last, fragile anchor to logic. He stood up abruptly, nearly stumbling in the sand, panic suffocating him.
Kaelis looked at him without moving his head; his stillness was an accusation. This time, his voice betrayed a thin shadow of amusement, a note of cosmic mockery.
"You are asking yourself useless questions and wasting precious energy, boy. We understand each other. That is what matters. The Tone of our thought is the same, the Frequency of communication is aligned. So why should you worry?"
The boy stood petrified, as if struck by silent lightning. Every logical question he tried to formulate fell apart between his fingers, reduced to dust.
"We are the same," Kaelis added, his voice returning to a flat, almost monastic tone. "On this land as on any other. Or at least, the part of us that communicates thought. Why should we impose upon ourselves the difference of a language, of an arbitrary code, when our soul speaks the same way? There is no need for a word to tell the truth."
He shrugged slightly, a gesture that expressed not indifference, but an acceptance of the ultimate reality.
"Perhaps it is a coincidence. Perhaps it is a gift. Or perhaps it is the latent magic, not yet awakened, that allows us to find our resonance. But we speak the same language, boy. That of need and understanding. Is that not enough?"
The boy lowered his gaze. His fists relaxed. The panic retreated.
Yes. It was enough. And it was the only thing, perhaps, keeping him sane.
He inhaled the hot, dry air deeply and then murmured with a new, strange calm:
"Thank you, Kaelis. Thank you for telling me the truth. Now I believe… I believe I am ready. To hear your next truth."
Then it was the man who remained silent for a few, very long seconds. The hood hid every expression, but an unmistakable sensation washed over the boy: perhaps Kaelis, for the first time, was satisfied with him. Not a paternal pride, but the recognition of a peer who had passed a small test.
"And now?" the boy asked, his voice firmer. "After accepting the nature of Delpharya and our resonance… what must we do?"
Kaelis turned completely toward the cliff, and the boy saw for the first time the massive shadow of his coat in the backlight.
"We descend," he said, and his voice returned to being icy, practical, almost military for an instant. "The ruins await us. They are our point of no return, our destination. From here on, the danger is real. There shouldn't be any encounters, but if something happens... do not move away from me. Not a step. Your safety, now, is my priority."
The boy straightened up, his body stiffening in a solemn acceptance. "All right. I am ready to descend."
They approached the edge of the abyss together.
The void opened before them, not only immense but also absurdly deep, with that kind of vertigo that pulls the soul right out of the body. The ruins lay hundreds of meters below: a titanic tangle of ancient stones, broken arches, and towers sleeping in the sand that seemed to have tried to swallow them for centuries without success. The remnants of a civilization that had believed it could touch Carcossya.
The boy swallowed. His throat went dry, an uncontrollable physical reaction. He had always been afraid of heights.
Kaelis noticed it. He felt it. Without looking at him, the man moved a little closer; his massive presence was an anchor of gravity.
"Do not worry," Kaelis said, with a surprisingly calm voice, almost a murmur. "I, too, am afraid of heights. Or, at least, I fear the fall and the sound of the fall."
He moved closer still, so that the fabric of his coat brushed the boy's shoulder. It was a human contact of deep, necessary trust.
"Trust me. It is not a descent; it is an alignment. You will be down there before you even realize it. Keep your gaze fixed on the bottom, not on the slope."
The boy inhaled, closed his eyes for an instant, and in the brief inner darkness, he found his only true resource: trust in the mysterious man. He nodded. Yes. He trusted him. He trusted his secret, his name, his shared fear.
Kaelis moved first, a calculated, sure step on the precarious edge. And the boy followed him, never looking down, but only at the dark and reassuring figure ahead of him.
And together, side by side, they began the descent toward the ancient ruins forgotten by the world, toward the stone silence they would soon have to interrogate. In that moment, in the pulsing heart of Delpharya's dawn, they were not two people. They were a single intention on the move.