Atop the Sanguine Court, the sun sits at the peak of a lone-standing staircase. The sun sits before you, resting above a castle, in the sky of an underground ruin.

You have so many questions that you simply give up trying to understand and attribute it to the eldritch magic of these Ruins. Like so many other things you've seen.

The sun is blindingly hot and bright, as would be expected, but out of the corner of your eye, you see... something... inside of it. You reach out your hand, but as the heat becomes unbearable, you pull it back. You curse, and glare squinting into the false sun. You might as well, you finally decide.

Even if you die, your Soul will endure as a Phantom. A little burning to death is not going to destroy your will to live. With a running start, and an involuntary wince, you leap off the staircase and into the sun.

The blazing light engulfs your body, and you suddenly feel the sensation of falling... falling... falling... until you finally land, tumbling out of the sky onto a bank of sand.

You open your eyes hesitantly, and find yourself prone in the desert. There is no sun in what looks to be the sky, merely a swirl of ever-changing drab greens and oranges. Are you... inside the sun?

The light (and heat, as your rampant sweating reminds you) seems to instead be omnipresent. You rise and walk towards a nearby stone hut, nearly crumbled but offering precious shade.

A figure beckons you closer, and to your surprise, it seems to be the hermit from the Lighthouse Dock.

"Ah, you made it. I feared that you might miss this place," You nod. Not many would be willing to throw themselves into the sun. "This... Mirage of Strife, floating in the sky."

He laughs sadly. "The Ruins seem to have a sense of humor. The sun-bleached sands, confined within a sun." He speaks of the Ruins as if they were alive... which wouldn't entirely surprise you.

"The desert is far too hot, and the only kind of 'shade' past here are those shimmering abominations you know so well."

"If you have no source of water, then you should prepare to boil. Hehehehe..." You rifle through your pack, searching for something that could aid you in this burning place. Otherwise, you have no other choice than to turn back...

You take a long drink from your enchanted Waterskin. You luckily found it among the Flowing Bridges, and it seems to never run out of water.

It is a small relief, however, in this barren place. Juggling your weaponry and your water, you dispatch Shades that emerge from the sand to attack you, descending past sandy cliffs to a wide expanse.

To your surprise, you see a crowd of people kicking up dust between the dunes. You creep near them, and sure enough, they are all Shades, albeit with two distinct variations on the uniforms they wear.

A skirmish between opposing armies. You watch the conflict in fascination, seeing the Shades on the front-lines fight, die, and be absorbed into the sand, only to reappear further back, and push ahead to the front once more.

You have no desire to become involved in the battle, so you walk around it, stepping onto twisting structures of glass that rise from the sands.

The desert is hottest here, as it focuses through great pillars of glass like trees, that stretch into the heavens. And below, through wayward gaps in the sand, you see images of the Ruins below, obscured by clouds...

A transparent stairway leads up, over the conflict and to a plateau of solid, grainy glass, where a sandstorm rages, sweeping up dust from the battles below.

You look down in awe, heart pounding as your body tells you that you should be falling. But instead, you are walking on air, hundreds of feet above the hot sands below. A veil of mist, tinged yellow by the sand, lies before you.

You squint as you delve into it, grains of sand rattling your helmet. The ambient light is obscured in the center of the storm, but it is no less hot.

The air distorts above the concentric rings of glass that sit at the center of the rise, but at the moment, that is the least of your worries. For a moment, the storm thickens, and when it thins again, a lone horseman stands opposing you.

Two living skeletons, it seems, the rider's face frozen in death's grin. From below, yellowed glass rises up, covering its bones, and the bones of its horse. Like amber flesh, it gives them life.

Laughing with a spectral fervor, the rider raises its hand to the sky, and sand materializes into a rough spear, which it levels at you. You ready yourself for combat, knowing that a simple glass rider won't be difficult to shatter.

But as he rides, he shimmers, and from the storm, another rider appears... and then another... and on and on until their numbers become immeasurable...

In the far end of the Oasis, past the fortifications clogged with blood-soaked Shades, lies a spring of pure water. It bubbles up from underground, and the water sparkles, radiant in the desert sunlight.

Just being near it makes the air feel cooler, but as you breathe deeply, the air turns sour. A shirtless, tan figure drops down from above, splashing into the spring. He holds a weapon in each hand: a damaged scimitar, and an opulent halberd; an utter mismatch.

Where it steps, the water thickens and turns to blood, until the bubbling is slow and gruesome. It stares at you silently, through empty sockets that blaze with bright blue flame.

It stands still as a statue as you trudge through the boiling blood, not even reacting as you raise your blade and slash into his skull. But disturbingly, you find that the transit of your blade lacks resistance... and instead, it stops every so often with a twang, as your blade snaps the thread holding the two halves of its body together.

Its head unfolds, revealing only shadowy material within, a blue flame erupting in the neck-hole, rushing down and exposing its entirely bisected body, shining in a line down his chest. He splits apart, each half bearing a weapon, each half standing on its own.

They shouldn't be able to stand. And yet they do, as if they were both whole, with half their bodies simply invisible...

You are forced to walk between the countless posts on your way forward, past this horrible storm, but you feel your strength waning. Where are you even going? And why?

You start to feel as if you've gotten lost. Maybe you've already reached the edge of this place, and there's nothing waiting for you here but death. You feel like one of those mummies, wandering aimlessly, taking shelter in sandy recesses... until you run flat up against a wooden wall.

You find that the wooden wall is tall... very, very tall. And its edges seem to fade into the storm in both directions. Is this it? The edge? You search the wall, hitting at it with your hands and equipment, walking down its whole length, until you feel as if you can walk no more.

But soon you find a gap between the heavy wooden planks, and slip through, not noticing your passage through the mist in the all-consuming whiteness.

With so little light before, the sudden orange glare of the sunset is blinding, and you wince, stumbling and cringing against the splintering wood. Once your eyes recover, you see that the visible world is bathed in a sickly orange, save for the ocean. Yes, the ocean...

You gaze down at it, the stark blue stretching across the horizon, eerily calm, with naught but the smallest waves. You walk slowly towards the gently lapping shore, and all you see at the border between sand and water are calcified corpses, prostrate in gestures of surrender. Or drinking.

And for a while, you are alone, with the salt-poisoned waves and the dead of the past. But a fell wind blows across the waves, and then you see it, rising over the horizon. Moving fast, faster than should be possible, it slides through the air above the water, disturbing not a single drop of salt.

And then it halts abruptly, just a few feet away from you. Like a comet, frozen in the sky. It resembles a mummified corpse, with its sun-bleached skin thin and cracked, its empty sockets staring without thought or reason, and its mouth agape with only a few scant teeth remaining.

An asymmetrical crown made of thorny driftwood rests on its head, hooded in the same wispy brown cloth that adorns the rest of its body, bound together by coarse threads that crisscross its chest.

Its bony hands and feet emerge from folds of cloth, never touching the ground, never feeling moisture. But that is what it yearns for, most of all. Its dryness is a palpable force, a wave of radiating corruption that cracks your lips and thins your cheeks.

With a raise of its staff, encrusted in sharp salt crystals, a great cacophony rises as a blast of salt rends the air as it blasts across the infinitely long beach, summoned from nowhere, and to nowhere it goes...