UNBELIEVABLE.

My sneakers dragged furrows in the sand. Each step heavier than the last, but I didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The desert stretched infinite before me, endless and empty.

Then her voice slithered in, not loud, not soft. Just… there.

“You don’t see it, do you?”

I kept walking.

“The way your body hums with weight… the way the earth bends beneath your heels. You’ve been leashed your whole life, little one. But you… you could split horizons.”

I swallowed hard, fists clenching at my sides.

“Potential like yours,” she purred, her words brushing the back of my neck, “isn’t given… it’s born. The desert feels it. The worm knows it. Even the dead in the sand would rise if you told them to.”

My walk quickened to a jog. My pulse hammered in my throat.

“Is this all you are?” she asked, voice laced with both hunger and challenge. “A boy dragging his feet through dust? A spark that dies before it burns? I saw your memories.”

Something inside me snapped. My jog became a run, boots slamming against the dunes, breath tearing ragged through my chest. The world blurred, sand spraying in my wake.

“Show me.”

Every muscle in me coiling like it was remembering something, something that didn’t belong to me at all.

And then—

The desert vanished.

No, not vanished—

I moved.

The sand ripped apart beneath me as I burst forward, air howling past my ears. My body blurred, colors smearing into gold and red, the horizon tilting violently. Each step wasn’t a step—it was an eruption, a shockwave that sent dunes collapsing miles away.

The worm ahead reared its monstrous head, but for the first time, it hesitated.

It felt something larger than itself.

“Yes…” her voice wrapped around my skull. 

“Yes. That’s it.”

The dunes shattered under my heels as I sprinted. The worm’s massive shadow stretched over the sand, its rows of teeth glinting like sawblades, the air trembling from its roar.

“Make everything around you bow to you,” she whispered, low and intoxicating, each word curling down my spine. “Do it.”

But I didn’t.

Instead of slamming into the worm, I bent the world itself under my stride, skimming past it in a golden blur.

 The beast’s jaws snapped shut just behind me, the shockwave flattening dunes for miles.

I slid hard into the sand, spraying it like molten sparks. My sneakers carved a deep trench as I skidded to a stop.

There—

A girl lying half-buried, her arm dark with dried blood, hoodie torn.

Sylvaine, she he laid there, unconscious.

I dropped to my knees, a sigh of relief escaping me. 

Sand collapsing under me and I got down on one knee and pressed fingers to her neck.

No pulse.

Hand to her chest.

Nothing.

Her face was slack. Peaceful. Like she’d just… stopped.

“Unbelievable,” I muttered, my throat raw. My voice cracked louder.

I slid my arms beneath her, lifting her weightless frame against me.

That’s when the world detonated.

Sand ruptured, exploding upward in molten spirals. The ground convulsed, lifting us both into the air as a shadow engulfed the sun.

The worm erupted, its mouth a cathedral of gnashing teeth, each one taller than me, saliva snapping into strings that hissed as they hit the hot dunes.

And before breath could even leave my lungs, before thought could stitch together—

The jaws came down.

We were swallowed whole.