Encounter 1

Where the Green Chokes the Sand

The air here is a thick, choking slurry of coastal humidity and abrasive desert dust. To the east, the jungle canopy groans under its own weight, its vines reaching out like grasping fingers toward the arid waste. To the west, the dunes of the Silent Wastes begin their relentless march, devouring the tropical flora in a slow-motion siege of sand. Between them lies a narrow, salt-crusted strip of land where the trees are skeletal and white, bleached by the spray of the nearby churning sea. The silence of this ecotone is heavy, broken only by the rhythmic crashing of waves against the jagged cliffs and the occasional, unsettling snap of a dry branch. Abandoned supplies and the scorched remains of a small wagon train lie half-buried in the shifting terrain, suggesting that whatever stalks this borderland does not care for the trinkets of civilization—only the meat within.