Mondo stumbled out of the Riviera, leaving behind a silence more profound than any noise he could have made. The brief, glorious taste of consequence had left him feeling only a deeper thirst. Their endless wine was an insult. He needed an honest drink, one that remembered its own humble origins and its noble, inevitable end.

His journey took him into the deep desert, back to the lands of thirst he understood. Patches, his Null Goat, trotted faithfully at his heels, his very presence a comforting drain on the world's overwrought magical field. They traveled for days under a merciless sun until they arrived at the legendary Zaros Oasis, a jewel of pure, sweet water surrounded by the only living palm trees for a hundred leagues. This, Mondo thought, was a place of truth.

He fell to his knees at the edge of the pool, scooping the clean, sweet water into his mouth with calloused hands. It was perfect. Pure. It quenched the fire in his throat. He drank and drank, laughing with relief. He filled his empty mescal bottle with the life-giving water, a treasure to carry back into the wastes.

He and Patches rested for a day under the shade of the palms. But as the second dawn approached, a strange disquiet settled in Mondo's gut. The water was too perfect. The palm trees were too green. The oasis was a bastion of life, an island of stubborn refusal in a world that craved the simplicity of sand. It was, in its own way, just as arrogant as the Riviera. It was a lie of defiance against the desert.

"Another pretty cage," he grumbled to Patches, who seemed to nod in his blank, magic-consuming way.

Mondo's thirst returned, but this time it was different. It was not for water. It was for an ending. He needed to see this beautiful lie brought to a conclusion. His devotion to finality, honed in the desert and sharpened in the Riviera, now demanded a sacrament.

He stood, holding the bottle filled with the sweet oasis water. He uncorked it, but instead of drinking, he performed a strange, intuitive ritual. He walked to the edge of the desert, where the last blade of grass met the first grain of sand. He knelt. From a pouch, he pulled out a small, rough stone, not of desert rock, but a dark, sea-worn stone given to him by a strange, silent man in rusting armor he had passed on the road months ago. He had kept it as a curiosity. Now he understood it was a key.

He dropped the Salt Stone into the bottle of fresh water.

The water hissed. It did not merely turn brackish. It transformed. A deep, cold, ancient memory bloomed within it—a memory of a pressure so profound it could turn coal into diamonds, of a darkness so absolute it made the desert night look like a bonfire. The sweet water of the oasis, having touched the holy relic of the sea, now remembered its true and final destiny. It was not meant to sustain life. It was meant to absorb it.

Mondo lifted the bottle. The water within was now a dark, briny teal. He drank.

The taste was not of salt, but of an answer. The thirst that had plagued him his entire life was gone, replaced by a vast, cold, and profoundly peaceful emptiness. It was the best, and last, drink he would ever have.

He walked back to the beautiful oasis and poured the remaining consecrated water from his bottle into the pool. The effect was immediate. A creeping stain of dark teal spread from the point of contact. The sweet water turned briny. A fine white crust of salt began to form on the lush green fronds of the palm trees.

The Oasis of Zaros was dying. And it was the most beautiful thing Mondo had ever seen. He had not destroyed it. He had liberated it from its tedious struggle for life. He had given it the gift of a perfect, noble, and honest end.

He stood there for a long time, watching the death of a paradise. He felt a new emotion, one he did not have a name for. It was a mix of profound sorrow and exultant joy. It was the feeling of a promise kept.

He looked down at Patches. "I think," he said, his voice quiet for the first time in his life, "it is time we went to the coast. I think it is time we found the god who taught the stones how to weep." And as he turned to leave, his null goat, for the first and only time, let out a soft bleat that sounded unnervingly like the tide receding over smooth, dark stones.

Entered by: 0xbB54…1D4F and preserved on chain (see transaction)