The dunes had changed.
As Nakala and the wounded demon traveled north, the sand grew darker — first gold, then rust, then gray. The air felt heavier here, as though every breath weighed something. Even the wind sounded tired.
They hadn't spoken in hours. The silence between them was not peace; it was calculation.
The demon moved with a limp, one arm bound crudely in cloth. His armor was dented and cracked, marked with sigils that pulsed faintly under moonlight. Nakala had noticed how his shadow sometimes moved before he did — like something alive, remembering its own rhythm.
When he finally spoke, his voice came like gravel shifting underfoot.
"You shouldn't be alive."
Nakala glanced sideways. "You've said that before."
"I'm saying it again because it still doesn't make sense. No human survives the southern sands. And no one carries a light that burns the way yours does."
He nodded toward her chest, where a faint red glow throbbed beneath the skin — the mark of Esh'ra's awakening.
> "Tell him nothing," the goddess murmured inside her. "He will twist your story into fear."
Nakala kept her tone steady. "I don't know what I am anymore."
The demon studied her for a moment, then looked away. "Good. That makes two of us."
---
They reached a ridge as dusk fell. Below them, the world changed again.
The dunes gave way to cracked earth streaked with veins of dull light — fractures in the land where something pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of a dying god. Shards of obsidian jutted from the soil, humming with quiet energy.
"The borderlands," the demon said, lowering himself to sit. "The Spirit Veil runs beneath these rocks. When it breaks, things come through."
"Things?"
He shrugged. "Spirits. Shadows. Sometimes entire memories. Last month a storm rolled through and left behind a city that shouldn't exist. Empty streets, burning lamps… no people. A memory of a place that the N'gai erased."
He said their name softly, as if speaking it could draw attention.
Nakala frowned. "You keep saying N'gai. What are they?"
His expression hardened. "No one knows. They look different every time you see them — sometimes light, sometimes voice, sometimes the reflection of your own face asking the wrong questions." He tore a piece of dried fruit from his pack and stared at it as though he didn't remember what food was for.
"They rewrite. That's their war. Not to kill, not to conquer — to unmake."
> "He speaks truth," Esh'ra murmured, her voice distant, thoughtful.
"I felt their hands when I slept. They pulled at the edges of my prison, not to open it… but to forget that it was there. Even gods can be erased, Nakala."
A cold unease crawled up her spine. "You sound afraid."
> "I am not afraid," said the goddess. "But I remember what it is to be unmade. That memory stains everything."
---
Night deepened. The desert's heat faded into a bone-deep chill.
They made camp beneath a half-collapsed arch of black stone — once a gate, maybe, now just ruin. Nakala built a small fire. The demon watched her with cautious eyes.
"You make fire like one of the old tribes," he said. "With song."
She blinked. "What do you mean?"
"When you hummed just now. The rhythm. The way you moved the sparks. That's the rhythm of the Red Sands. They were said to heal with their voices."
He tilted his head slightly. "You're one of them."
Nakala froze. "I was."
He nodded slowly, gaze falling back to the flames. "I fought against your kind once, long ago. You sang as you died. I can still hear it when I close my eyes."
> "He grieves," Esh'ra said quietly. "Even demons know sorrow. That is why their rage tastes so pure."
Nakala watched the flicker of the fire on his face — not monstrous, she realized, but tired. His eyes were sharp, but not cruel.
"What's your name?" she asked.
He hesitated. "Names have power."
"So I've heard."
A long pause. Then: "Iri'okan."
She repeated it softly, the syllables strange and heavy on her tongue. "Iri'okan."
His gaze lifted briefly. Something in him eased.
---
Later, when he slept, Nakala sat awake beside the dying fire. The goddess inside her stirred, restless.
> "You are letting him too close," Esh'ra murmured.
"He saved me."
> "He watched you. That is not the same as saving."
"You could have killed him," Nakala said. "But you didn't."
> "Because you didn't let me."
They fell silent together, the desert whispering around them. Above, the stars burned in patterns she didn't recognize — constellations that shifted when she tried to trace them.
> "This world feels wrong," Esh'ra said, almost to herself. "The sky moves differently. The gods that once walked here are gone or sleeping. I can taste the silence they left behind."
"What happened to them?" Nakala asked softly.
> "They devoured themselves. Like me. Like all things that burn too long."
The fire went out. Only the cold remained.
And in that cold, the goddess whispered once more — not as a queen, but as something almost human.
> "Do not forget this, Nakala. The world does not end in flame or war. It ends when the living stop remembering that it was ever alive."
Nakala closed her eyes. Her heartbeat slowed until it matched the faint pulse beneath the ground — the rhythm of a dying realm still pretending to breathe.
---
By dawn, the horizon had changed again.
A distant haze shimmered over the northern sands, where light bent wrong — a curtain of silver mist swaying like a living thing. The Spirit Veil.
Iri'okan pointed toward it. "That's where we'll find answers. Or our end."
Nakala said nothing. The goddess within her merely hummed, low and pleased.
> "Answers and endings," Esh'ra murmured. "They are the same thing."
And together, they walked toward the shimmer that waited beyond the dunes — unaware that something unseen was already following, whispering to itself in voices made of silence.