Fanna tensed her muscles and nerves at the first moment, and looked at the tall figure that was gradually emerging from the dust and mist with full vigilance - if the situation was slightly wrong, she would be ready to jump and chop over.

But from the wind, sand and dust came a gentle and rational voice: "Ah... a traveler. It seems that I haven't seen a stranger here for many years."

Fanna was stunned for a moment, and then she saw the giant figure walking out of the dust and mist.

He was at least four or five meters tall, so Vanna had to raise her head as much as possible to see the giant's face. His body was wrapped in a dark-colored, rag-like robe. The robe once seemed to be an exquisite garment, but now it was only tattered and worn out by countless vicissitudes of life. The giant's body was skinny, as if it had been worn out by the long journey and was almost a skeleton - but the skinny hand was tightly holding a huge and somewhat exaggerated staff.

Even in the hands of a giant, the staff seemed too heavy and huge. The body of the staff was like a straight tree trunk with segments, and the top of the staff was swollen like a swollen rock, with a rough outline that was almost uncarved. On the surface of the staff, one could see countless dense, complex and mysterious lines, covering the entire staff.

Vanna's eyes were involuntarily drawn to the walking stick - it didn't look like a tool to assist the journey, but more like an amazing weapon, or some kind of ritual object with heavy symbolic meaning, which made her instinctively feel... a kind of pressure that was almost awe.

But soon, her attention shifted from the cane to the giant.

Because the giant was bending down slightly towards her, his weathered face was giving her a gentle gaze - the giant's face did not look like that of a human. Although he had clear facial features, the lines of those features seemed too cold and sharp, even giving people a texture of rock carving. His eyes were a chaotic brown-yellow, and flames seemed to be dancing deep in his eyeballs. Every glance seemed to bring heavy pressure to people.

"Where are you from, traveler?" asked the giant.

When he opened his mouth, even the wind and sand around him seemed to be stirred by an invisible force. The chaotic air currents swirled around Vanna, but not a single grain of sand fell on her.

Vanna tried hard to control her heartbeat and expression. She quickly reported the shocking situation to the captain in her deep consciousness. At the same time, she organized her words and thought carefully before answering the giant: "I come from outside the desert, far away from here. I don't know why I came to this place. Excuse me... who are you?"

"Oh, outside the desert... now this is a desert." The giant nodded slowly, but did not answer Vanna's question. He just said with emotion in his tone, "You... are very interesting, traveler. You are not the same as the human in my memory, but I am not sure if I remembered it wrongly - after all, I haven't seen a stranger for a long time."

Not quite the same as the humans in my memory?

When Fanna heard the other party's words, her heart suddenly moved, and then she thought of the "differences" between her and ordinary people.

This mysterious giant... saw the qualities that had blessed him with the Warp and "resurrected" him?

But before she could think further, the giant spoke again: "Traveler, you said you came from far away. How far is that? Did you cross space or time?"

Vanna was stunned for a moment.

What does this question mean?!

She looked up in astonishment and looked into the giant's cloudy, burning eyes: "I... don't quite understand the meaning of this question."

"...Then just pretend you didn't hear it, traveler. Perhaps the starting point of the journey is no longer meaningful, and the same is true for the end point." The giant shook his head, but then he seemed to have suddenly discovered something and looked at Vanna curiously, "Are you talking to someone else?"

Vanna, who was reporting the situation to the captain in her deep consciousness, stopped instantly. Although she controlled the expression on her face at the first moment, she knew that the subconscious changes in her eyes might not have been hidden from the eyes of the giant.

However, the giant seemed to just ask casually, and he didn't seem to really care about this question. He shook his head: "It doesn't matter if you don't want to say it. Everyone has their own secrets."

Vanna calmed herself down, controlling the changes in her facial expressions while observing the mysterious giant's every move. At the same time, she cautiously asked again, "Who are you?"

"Are you asking about my name? Let me think..." This time, the giant finally responded to her question. However, after thinking for a moment, the giant shook his head and said, "It's been too long. I can't remember it... It's really been too long."

He lowered his eyes and looked at Vanna. On his skinny face, wrinkles like cuts gradually accumulated: "Do you know, traveler, when there is no other voice in the world, 'name' will become a meaningless concept. No one else needs to remember you, and you don't need to introduce yourself to others. You will slowly forget it, just like being slowly forgotten by the world..."

He paused, as if he was suddenly immersed in some distant memories. After a long time, he woke up as if startled, and said in a low voice: "But besides my name, I do remember some other things, if you think it makes sense... A long, long time ago, they said that I was the god of this world. At that time, this place was not like this."

The chaotic wind gradually subsided, and the dust floating around slowly stopped at some point. In this endless sea of ​​sand, the giant and the lost traveler looked at each other.

He said he was once a god.

Vanna's eyes widened. This "answer" was not one of her guesses about the mysterious giant. She didn't know how to react for a moment, and then she felt an absurd contradiction -

As a follower of the storm goddess Gemona and a saint of the Deep Sea Church, one of the four orthodox churches, she unexpectedly encountered a giant who claimed to be a god in the depths of the mysterious dream of the nameless man. In theory... she should rise up and fight to eradicate this existence who claimed to be God in order to fulfill her mission as an inquisitor.

But she was no longer the reckless person who dared to jump when she saw Captain Duncan. On the Lost Homeland, she learned to face those incredible things with a more rational attitude.

"Are you a god?" Vanna said cautiously while tense, "Who are the 'they' you are talking about? And where exactly is this place?"

"They used to live here," the giant seemed unaware of Vanna's momentary alertness. He simply raised his hand and pointed his staff at the endless sea of ​​sand. "But that seemed to be a long, long time ago... or maybe it wasn't that long ago?"

The giant paused in confusion. He looked at the staff in his hand and shook his head slowly after a while. "Time... has become something I don't recognize. It was stretched to near infinity in an instant, and then compressed again. I can no longer be sure when that happened. I only remember that this was once the most prosperous hinterland of the kingdom. The yellow sand under your feet was once a thousand miles of forest and fertile soil. Huge canals spanned the plains, diverting rivers from the plateau over the hills. I watched them build a pure white city here, with high walls connecting the mountains, tall towers rising from the jungle, and bright flames lighting up the night sky... I remember it was very beautiful."

The giant spoke slowly. It seemed as if he had not talked to anyone for a long time and was no longer used to organizing his logic when speaking, so his words seemed a little disorganized, like himself talking in a dream. Fanna could only try her best to keep up with his narration, to understand and guess the information conveyed in his words, and to imagine what the desert had looked like in the distant past as described by him.

Then, the giant suddenly stopped, lowered his head and looked at Vanna, and asked curiously: "What about you? Traveler, who are you? Do you have a name?"

Vanna pursed her lips subconsciously, and she immediately resisted the urge to answer.

One cannot rashly reveal one's name to an unknown being - especially when this being calls himself a "god" and is most likely a powerful superior being.

He may not have any ill intentions, but some supernatural beings that are powerful enough often do not need any subjective malice to interfere with the fate of mortals. After becoming the captain's follower, Vanna understood this more deeply than ever before.

After a moment of hesitation, she spoke cautiously: "My name is Vanessa. I don't have any special identity. I'm just someone who accidentally got lost here."

"Vanessa..." the giant muttered softly, then shook his head, "That's not your name."

Vanna felt her heartbeat quicken instantly.

However, the giant waved his hand and said, "It doesn't matter. Like I said, everyone has secrets. If you don't want to reveal your name, I will continue to call you 'Traveler'. There is no one else here anyway, so we won't mistake each other."

Vanna was silent for a moment, and after a brief moment of awkwardness, she nodded.

"Traveler," the giant continued, "where are you going?"

Vanna hesitated for a moment and looked up at the silhouette in the distance that looked like a city ruins.

"Let's go together," the giant noticed Vanna's gaze and made a friendly invitation, "Although I don't remember much about those long-ago events, we can go together. I still have some impression of this world..."

Vanna didn't say anything for a while, as if she was waiting for something.

A moment later, the captain's order came from deep within her consciousness -

"Accept the invitation."

"Okay," Vanna nodded, looking up at the giant who claimed to be a god, "It's an honor to embark on this journey with you."