The sensation of space twisting had barely faded when a blast of heat hit him in the face.
The ground gave beneath Ryuto's feet, and he nearly lost his balance.
Sand.
Sand as far as the eye could see.
Golden dunes lay like frozen waves, layer upon layer, stretching to the horizon. The sun hung overhead, glaring white, its heat warping the air. Wind whipped grains of sand against his face. They stung a little.
"This place..." Ryuto narrowed his eyes and raised a hand to shade them.
"The Endless Desert." Tobirama Senju's voice came from beside him as he put away a used talisman. "The Flying Thunder God beacon's marked point is here, on the outskirts."
Madara Uchiha had already straightened up. He surveyed their surroundings, his Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan gleaming faintly purple in the harsh light.
"Desolate enough."
Hashirama Senju pulled the map from inside his clothes and spread it open.
"The ruins are in the central region, near an oasis called the Sage Eye." He pointed at the red circle on the map. "We'll have to cross the desert."
"How far?" Uchiha Izuna asked.
"Judging by the map's scale, a little over a hundred li in a straight line." Hashirama put away the map. "We can't run at full ninja speed. It would consume too much chakra. Besides, this place... something's not right."
Ryuto had already extended his Ki Sense.
Like an invisible net, it covered several li around them.
Sand shifted beneath his feet. In the distance, wind stirred up columns of sand. Farther away...
His brow furrowed slightly.
"There's something out there," Ryuto said.
"What?" Hashirama looked at him.
"In the sand." Ryuto stared at a patch of sand roughly two hundred meters ahead and to the right. "Alive. Pretty big. Moving underneath."
Madara turned