"—Please, my lord, come inside!"
"Don't worry, my lord. We'll take good care of your carriage!"
"I swear in the name of the Ancestor Snake's Scale that not a single item of property will be lost!"
The Snake People guards watching over the temple were so respectful—almost obsequiously flattering—that Anar was utterly stunned.
...These are Snake People??? These are the Snake People who always wore stiff, deathly expressions and acted cold and unapproachable? Anar felt as if she were dreaming.
She had originally been extremely reluctant to bring Iver and the others to the Snake People Temple.
It was like encountering a powerful person traveling incognito who suddenly took it into their head to visit your home—while you happened to have an ill-mannered, tactless relative who was visibly displeased with that powerful person.
At times like this, you were terrified something would go wrong. Bringing them was wrong, but not bringing them was wrong too...
But once they arrived and took a look—well, would you look at that! It was actually someone they knew.
That foul-mouthed relative was actually the powerful person's old friend, practically their buddy! Before entering the temple, Anar turned back and looked outside, feeling somewhat melancholy and lost.
At that moment, all she could see outside was the yellow sand blotting out the sky.
It was said that sand had the texture of warm snow. But Anar had come to Star Antimony many times and had never once seen snow.
Their only common feature, perhaps, was that countless corpses lay buried beneath both of them.
Anar had long since lost count of how many people she had seen disappear into the sand. Many of them had nothing to do with her, but some did. Sometimes, as she walked across the sand, she would suddenly hallucinate a