Chapter 143: Mecanic Silence
The mountain was now just a blurred memory behind them. The forest too had melted into the mists of the past. Before them stretched the plain—an ocean of stones they’d been trekking across for hours.
A near-desert landscape of chilling austerity. The skeletal ground cracked under their steps, a dry sound amplifying the oppressive silence. Not a single silhouette on the horizon, not the slightest sign of life to prove they weren’t the last living beings on this thankless earth.
That day, the sun—their relentless enemy of days past—had veiled itself. The sky weighed on the world like a lid of leaden gray, uniform and threatening. Yet since dawn, not a drop had fallen. An unexpected truce, almost unnerving. As if the world itself held its breath, or finally granted them a meager favor.
Whatever newfound strength burned in their veins, whatever resilience forged in adversity, none of them—not even Élisa—would have dared claim they could have covered such distance under the usual scorching sun. The mere thought of that desiccating torture tightened their throats.
Despite the looming threat from the sky, they quickened their pace. The area was desperately barren: no bush, no crevice in the rock, not the simplest shelter to huddle in if the deluge finally broke. Only pebbles stretching endlessly, heated by a sickly light.
So they kept course, straight ahead, toward uncertain infinity. Élisa walked at the front, her eyes scanning the familiar horizon. Thirty years had passed, she’d said, yet this mineral desert hadn’t budged. Not a stone displaced, not a ravine filled. An immobility bordering on eternity.
Behind her, Dylan and Maggie advanced in silence. A heavy silence, woven from fatigue and caution. Every wasted word was a drop of water lost, precious energy vanishing into the dry air. Thirst already gnawed—a cruel reminder in this parched land where water was already a ghost.
——
Their progress became a litany of dull aches. Each step raised clouds of mineral dust that clung to their sweat-damp skin, coating their drawn faces in a grayish film. Under their soles, pebbles rolled with dry scrapes—sole witnesses to their passage in this petrified wasteland.
Suddenly, as if obeying some sinister joke, the sky began its betrayal. The heavy clouds, which had seemed laden with heaven’s wrath, fragmented into tattered shreds.
They slid toward the horizon like a routed army, leaving behind a canvas of hard, implacable blue. The sun burst forth in full violence, turning stones into blinding mirrors.