The wind contended across the barren plains of Akkar, its howl rising like a lament from the throats of a thousand forgotten ancestors. Dust devils swirled in the distance, painting the sky with burnt umber and faded gold, and through this grim desert marched a single caravan, its banners blessed with the symbol of the Eternal Flame.

The air above Salar de Uyuni remained thin and still, yet the world below hummed with new eventuality. A time had passed since the first full transmission to the Arcway. Though no vessel descended from the stars, no reality surfaced from the void, Earth was no longer the same. 

The world had changed since the reawakening of the Master Resonator. Across mainlands, old tabernacles stirred, long-dormant vestiges hummed, and people — from scientists to growers, from monks to schoolchildren — began passing dreams and perceptivity not born from their own minds, but from a participated harmonious field now still connecting all of humanity. 

The wind swept across the thirsty plains of the Taklamakan Desert, a ocean of golden stacks that rumored stories long buried beneath their shifting forms. Ancient caravans formerly marched through this unfaithful breadth, their camel trains laden with silk, wanton, spices, and scrolls signed with forgotten wisdom. 

In the heart of North Africa, along the broad Mediterranean seacoast, the ancient megacity of Carthage rose like a phoenix from fire and swab. Born from Phoenician roots, it was a megacity erected on commerce, culture, cunning, and subjection. Its people were mariners and strategists, crafters and astronomers, romanticists and doers.

Beneath the scorching sun of the Egyptian desert, a golden haze lustered above the horizon, as if time itself wavered in the heat. The Conglomerations of Giza stood recalcitrant and eternal, their limestone faces bruiting to the welkin in a lingo long lost to man. 

The swash that had spoken to Egypt also rumored in India. But then it was n't one swash but numerous, platting through the land in sacred figure. The Indus. The Ganga. The Sarasvati, lost but not forgotten. 

The swash spoke before the people did. Long before the First Tongue took form, the Nile sculpted its words in green along the desert’s silent mouth. Layla felt that ancient truth as she stepped off the battered skiff and onto the old dam, the slimy slush clinging to her sandals like the stink of empty memory. 

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.