He had hoped the vast indifference of the Tottori sands could scour a man clean. But where the dunes bled into the reed-choked swamps, solace was a foreign concept. Here, the silence was not empty—it was heavy, ancient, saturated with the smell of decay. The mist was a permanent shroud, clinging to the stunted pines and swallowing the horizon, blurring the line between land, water, and a sky th...
