The Desert of regret

Devraj limped through the dune's shifting skin, the golden-grey grains rising like sighs beneath his feet. The desert stretched endlessly in all directions, shimmering with a mirage of stillness. But there was no heat. No sun. No wind. Just sand, sorrow, and silence.

Yet this silence was not empty.

The more he walked, the more it spoke to him. Not in words, but in the quiet language of broken things. As if the land itself remembered pain, and bore its wounds with pride.

He stumbled upon the first structure by accident—a chair.

An old wooden chair, half-buried in the sand, arms worn smooth by use, one leg missing, tilted forever toward a fall that would never be completed. Nearby, torn pages fluttered lazily, though there was no wind. He picked one up. The writing was illegible, vanishing before his eyes. But the page felt heavy—emotionally, not physically. He dropped it, his fingers tingling with an ache he couldn’t name.

He walked on.

Then came a door, standing upright in the middle of the desert. No frame. No walls. Just the door—cracked paint, rusted handle, locked. It hummed faintly when he touched it, like a heartbeat slowed to the rhythm of grief. Behind it, nothing. Yet he felt as if someone was still trying to enter… or escape.

Around the next dune, he saw them.

Windows. Hundreds of them, scattered across the sand like fossils. Some were shattered, some pristine. Through a few, he glimpsed things—fleeting images. A woman weeping alone at a dinner table. A boy burying his dog beneath a maple tree. A man burning a letter, the flames reflecting in his hollow eyes. The windows pulsed with memory—each one a regret. Not his, but deeply familiar. Universal.

The sand itself changed in color and texture depending on where he stepped. In one patch, it became cold and silver like ash, rising in low spirals as if mourning something burned long ago. In another, it hardened briefly into cobbled stone—fragments of a road someone had once walked away on, never looking back.

Devraj could feel them all—these lingering scars, emotional echoes solidified into terrain. His limp worsened as he walked, his ankle swelling, but he pressed forward, each step driven more by need than reason.

He came upon a mirror next.

Tall, standing upright like a sentinel. Its surface was cracked, but it still reflected. Except… it didn’t show him.

It showed a man, older, tired, sitting in a hospital room holding the hand of a woman who no longer recognised him. He was whispering words she couldn’t understand. His eyes were hollow. As if years had bled out of him. As if he regretted never saying something, never leaving, or never staying. The mirror shimmered, and the image faded.

Devraj staggered back, breath caught in his throat.

He touched his chest—his skin was cold again, the glowing symbols pulsing faintly. Were these visions meant for him? Or was he merely passing through a collective dreamscape of regrets?

It didn’t matter. He couldn’t unsee them.

The desert’s beauty came not from majesty, but from melancholy. And it was beautiful, in that tragic, aching way a forgotten song might be. Beautiful like a goodbye whispered too late.

At one point, the sand turned crimson.

He stopped.

Dozens of statues stood before him—humanoid figures, some kneeling, some reaching skyward, others curled into themselves in silent screams. Their faces were vague, eroded, and yet all expressed a singular emotion: regret. One held a child who wasn’t there. Another pointed toward something long buried. A few were simply lying face down in the sand.

Each statue radiated a particular heaviness, as if sculpted not by hands but by memory and shame.

Devraj sat for a while near them, breathing hard. His injured ankle throbbed in steady waves. He felt as though he had intruded into a sacred graveyard.

As he looked around, he whispered, “What is this place?”

The desert didn’t answer. But it shifted. Slightly.

A breeze.

The first movement of air since he had entered this land.

And with it came sound.

A soft, hollow whimper was carried across the dune like a forgotten cry. Devraj stood sharply, despite the pain. He turned toward the source.

Beyond the statues, the sand curved sharply upward, forming a natural rise. He climbed it with effort, limping, dragging one foot through the grit. When he reached the top, he paused.

There. At the base of the next slope.

A body.

Not a statue. Not a memory. A real person.

Still. Lying face-down in the sand.

He stared, chest rising with sudden tension.

This was the first sign of life in this dreamscape of absence. His instincts screamed caution. But curiosity burned brighter.

He descended the slope carefully. The closer he came, the more his heart pounded—not with fear, but something else. Something like relief. Something like hope.

The figure was humanoid. Wrapped in dark cloth. Skin pale like bone. Long hair tangled with grains of sand. It didn’t move. Not even a twitch. Devraj hesitated a meter away.

Alive?

Dead?

Or something else entirely?

He crouched slowly, favoring his injured ankle, and reached out a hand, his fingers trembling as they hovered over the figure’s shoulder.

The sand shifted minutely beneath his feet. The statues behind him seemed to lean, as if watching. Even the sky dimmed, the lightless clouds pressing lower.

Devraj took a deep breath.

And touched the figure.

The skin was cold. But not lifeless.