The desert had changed.
Tahir Al-Mansur could feel it in the silence between footsteps, in the way the wind circled without touching skin. The sand beneath them felt less like earth, more like something waiting. Watching.
Layla walked beside him, clutching the map from the mad cartographer. Behind them, Amira rode quietly on Kasira, her eyes occasionally flicking toward the dunes with nervous energy. Sabir stayed in the rear, humming an old caravan song under his breath, though even his voice felt uncertain now.
"Are we close?" Tahir asked without looking back.
"No," Layla replied, unfolding the scroll again. "But the land feels… wrong. This place—it's not on any route."
"It's because we've crossed into the Sand That Sees," Sabir said. "Old desert lore. A cursed stretch where the dunes remember the steps of the dead."
Tahir narrowed his eyes. "And you brought us here?"
"You needed to avoid the watchers of Malik Zahari," Sabir replied. "This is the price."
Amira suddenly stiffened. Her eyes flickered gold.
"Tahir," she whispered. "We're not alone."
Then, the sand moved.
Not in the way wind stirs it—but as if something beneath it was waking.
A ripple. A rise. Then a tall figure, veiled in swirling grains, stood before them. Human, yet not. The outline shimmered. No mouth. No eyes. But a presence.
"A guardian," Layla breathed.
The creature raised one arm. The sand around them spun upward in spirals.
Tahir stepped forward. "We mean no harm. We seek truth."
No response. Only a whisper that came from all around.
"Truth is earned in the land of memory."
Suddenly, the desert disappeared.
Each of them stood alone—in a place made of memory.
Tahir blinked. He stood in his childhood village. Ruins. Fire. Screams. His mother calling his name as soldiers burned everything. He looked down—his hands held a bloodied blade.
"No," he growled. "Not this again."
"You must face it," a voice said.
Om'bara.
The god of veiled paths stood behind him now, dressed in robes of storm and starlight.
"This place remembers who you were," Om'bara said. "And what you could become."
Tahir fell to one knee, breath shaking. "Why show me this?"
Om'bara approached. "Because the throne you seek is not just forged from stone and gold. It is shaped from memory, blood, and the truth you bury."
"You said there was a throne."
"There is. But it is not what you believe."
Om'bara touched Tahir's chest. "You must gather the fragments of your name. Only then will the throne reveal itself."
Then the world vanished again.
Tahir opened his eyes—back in the desert. The sand was still now. The guardian gone.
He looked around. Layla was pale. Sabir knelt in the sand, shaking. Amira had tears running down her face.
"What did you see?" he asked her.
"My father," she whispered. "He told me I have power I don't yet understand."
Tahir turned to the horizon. "Then we keep going. We're not just running anymore. We're walking toward something greater."
And as they moved, the wind whispered again—not in fear this time, but in recognition.
End of Chapter 12