The sand beneath him burned like crushed glass, each grain searing through his clothes as consciousness clawed its way back. His mouth tasted of copper and dust, throat so dry it felt cracked. Above him, a merciless sun blazed in a sky too perfect, too blue—the kind of endless dome that promised no shelter, no mercy.
Where am I?
The thought came sluggishly, wrapped in cotton and confusion. He pushed himself upright, muscles protesting with every movement. His vision swam, heat waves distorting the horizon into a shimmering lie. Desert stretched in every direction—not the rolling dunes of movies, but flat, endless wasteland that seemed to swallow hope itself.
No roads. No buildings. No footprints but his own, already being erased by wind that tasted of eternity.
His stomach clenched with a hunger so sharp it doubled him over. How long since he'd eaten? The memory slipped away like water through his fingers. Everything before this moment felt distant, unreal—as if his life had begun the instant he opened his eyes to this blazing hell.
Get moving or die here.
The choice was that simple. That brutal.
He stumbled forward, each step sinking slightly into sand that seemed determined to drag him down. The sun hammered against his skull, and sweat that should have cooled him evaporated before it could fall. His shadow was a small, pathetic thing cowering directly beneath him—no indication of direction, no promise of relief.
"Hello?" The word cracked from his lips, barely audible. It was swallowed by the vastness, leaving behind only the whisper of wind across empty land. "Is anyone there?"
Silence answered. Not the peaceful quiet of solitude, but the aggressive emptiness of abandonment.
His legs began to shake after what felt like hours but might have been minutes. Time moved differently here, stretched thin by heat and desperation. The horizon never seemed to get closer, as if he were walking on some cosmic treadmill designed by a sadistic god.
The hunger evolved from sharp pangs to a constant, gnawing ache that made thinking difficult. His tongue felt swollen, foreign in his mouth. Each breath scorched his lungs, and the world began to tilt at odd angles.
This is it, he realized with surprising clarity. I'm going to die here.
The thought should have terrified him. Instead, there was almost relief in it—an end to the suffering, to the impossible vastness, to the questions with no answers. He'd fought as long as he could, hadn't he? Walked until his body simply couldn't take another step.
His knees hit the sand with barely a sound. The sun seemed to pulse overhead, growing brighter, hotter, until it filled his entire vision. His body felt surprisingly light, as if the desert were already claiming him, turning him into just another grain among billions.
"Guess... my time has come," he whispered, the words more breath than sound.
The world faded to white, then to nothing at all.
---
Cool air kissed his skin like a gentle benediction.
His eyes snapped open to a sky painted silver with moonlight. The same endless desert stretched around him, but now it was transformed—beautiful, serene, touched with shadows that looked almost alive. The oppressive heat was gone, replaced by a coolness that felt like salvation itself.
He sat up slowly, muscles moving without pain, without the crushing fatigue that had driven him to his knees. The hunger was gone too, as if his body had been restored to some earlier state—before the suffering, before the endless march toward death.
But I died. The memory was crystal clear: the final moments, the surrender, the fading into white. I definitely died.
Above him, the moon hung like a silver coin, casting everything in ethereal light. It was beautiful in a way that made his chest ache—not with hunger now, but with something deeper, more complex. Wonder, perhaps. Or the first stirrings of a fear far worse than death itself.
Because if he could die and wake up again, what did that make him?
What kind of hell was this, where even death offered no escape?
He stood, brushing sand from clothes that should have been fouled with sweat and desperation but felt oddly clean. The desert waited, patient as eternity, beautiful and terrible under its silver crown.
If I can't die, he thought, taking his first step into this new world of moonlight and impossible second chances, then what happens when I try?
The question followed him into the silver-touched wasteland, where the only sound was his footsteps and the whisper of wind that might have been laughter.