The desert did n't drink them. It rumored, it lustered , but it did n't invite. The wind swept across the stacks like a broad encounter over old diploma, uncovering nothing and everything at formerly. Layla shielded her eyes as the heat pressed down on them like a memory that refused to fade.

Morning spread through the ruined tabernacle like revealed gold, illuminating busts that had slept for centuries beneath ground and coral. Layla woke to the hush of wind through bamboo, to the dry crinkle of the fire’s last embers. She sat up sluggishly, stiff from the cold gravestone beneath her, and looked around.

The land stretched vast beneath the sky, an endless mosaic of gutters sculpturing denes , mountains rising like ancient guards guarding secrets rumored through the periods. Layla stood on a scraggy peak, wind lugging at her cloak as the Fifth Language palpitated vocally beneath her bases, weaving itself into the earth, the air, and the sky.

 Long before the Great Wall rose like a gravestone dragon across the mountains, before emperors sculpted their will into wanton and silk, there was a land rumored to be cradled by gutters as old as time itself. The Yellow River — Huang He — sculpted its way through vast plains, feeding life into soil heavy with pledge and ancient memory. It was then, along these winding waters, that one of humanity’s oldest and most profound societies began to stir — a civilization fated to write a story of invention, belief, and adaptability that would echo through glories.

The line moved onward beneath a sky that sounded alive, stars shimmering with an intensity that defied distance and time. Layla stood still at the prow, the night wind soft against her skin, carrying whispers that brushed her studies like feathers. The Fifth Language palpitated beneath her skin — a living meter syncing her twinkle to the macrocosm itself. Around her, the vessels formed a constellation of their own, bound together not just by ropes and wood, but by memory and purpose. 

The night sky above the line was unlike any Layla had ever seen. Stars flitted in strange patterns, constellations she could n't name lustered like silent guards watching over the vast ocean below. The connection forged by the Fifth Language stretched between the vessels like vestments of light, weaving a shade that palpitated with ancient measures and rumored secrets aged than the swell.

The ocean behind them boiled with memory.The line moved sluggishly now — deliberate, doubtful. Dozens of vessels from forgotten worlds, half- ruined vessels and living crafts sutured from coral and bone, all sailed in uncertain conformation, not by command but by recognition.Not trust yet.But commodity close.Layla stood at the helm, no longer surprised that she knew how to steer.

The ocean was still. So impeccably still it felt unnatural. The boat approached without wind. Its cruises bagged in silence. Its housing glistered with living symbols that rearranged themselves constantly, as if the vessel were writing its own preface over and over. Layla, Omar, Soraya, and the child watched from the tabernacle way. The night around them had settled into an insolvable twilight — a mix of dusk and dawn that refused to come moreover. None of them spoke. There was nothing to say. 

The night above the tabernacle remains was silent, but it was n't still. The stars had changed. Layla satcross-legged beside the blank tablet, fritters resting on its cool face. The others slept in uneasy packets of cloth and packs, but Layla kept her surveillance. The tablet was empty, yet bucketed with a slow, steady twinkle she could feel in her bones. When she looked up, the sky was a black ocean.