The eerie stillness made it worse.
"Sand?" Elius would think of Jiro. His first recruit.
Clint, Balkan, and Monkaar stood a distance away, their faces pale, frozen, watching it with unreadable expressions.
"W-What happened?" Elius asked sharply, striding toward them. "Where's Jiro?"
None of them answered immediately. Clint, the bullet, merely stared at the sand wall, his jaw clenched.
"Where's. Jiro?" Elius repeated, slower now, his voice tight.
Balkan pointed weakly at the coffin-shaped structure. "We d-don't know, but… b-but… by the l-look of it… he c-could be—inside?"
Elius frowned. "Inside? How? What—?"
His instincts flared with danger.
Without hesitation, he leapt forward, pulling back his right arm and delivering a thunderous punch toward the sand wall.
BAM!
His fist impacted solid stone-like sand.
A blast of spiritual force erupted outward, scattering moss and dust—but the wall didn't so much as budge.
