The desert did not remain still.
Isaac noticed it only after taking his first step.
The sand shifted behind him, smoothing over the shallow mark left by his shoe. Within seconds, the footprint was gone. Not softened by wind. Not slowly buried.
Erased.
Isaac stared at the empty place where he had stood.
Then he looked ahead.
The same pale dunes stretched toward every horizon, rising and falling beneath a sky that could not decide whether it was morning or evening. Light spilled from opposite ends of the world—gold on one side, violet on the other—yet Isaac could find no sun in either direction.
He turned slowly.
His shadow divided beneath him.
One leaned east.
The other west.
Isaac stopped breathing.
"No," he whispered.
The desert answered with wind.
He touched the front of his coat, then his pockets, searching for his phone. It was still there. The screen lit beneath his trembling thumb, but there was no signal. No network. No location.
The time displayed was wrong.
Or perhaps it had stopped.
He pressed the power button again.
The numbers changed.
Then returned to what they had been before.
Isaac stared at them until the screen went dark.
"Habhay," he said aloud.
The name vanished into the open land.
Nothing answered.
He began walking.
He did not know where he was going. Standing still felt more dangerous, though he could not explain why. Every few steps, he looked over his shoulder, hoping to see the house return—the broken window, the porch, the woman beneath the rain.
But the desert erased every footprint behind him.
Soon, even Isaac could no longer tell where he had begun.
The wind rose.
It should have brought relief.
The air that moved across the desert was cold—far colder than the rain Isaac had left behind. It slipped beneath his coat and through the damp fabric of his clothes, brushing against the sweat gathering at the back of his neck.
And yet, beneath his shoes, the sand burned.
Isaac stopped.
Heat pressed through the soles of his polished shoes, faint at first, then steadily deepening. It did not feel like ordinary ground warmed beneath the sun. There was no sun above him to explain it.
He lifted one foot, then the other.
The sand beneath each shoe had darkened.
Isaac looked toward the horizon again.
Gold burned at one end of the desert. Violet rested at the other. The colours remained fixed, neither rising nor fading, as though morning and evening had met at opposite edges of the world and refused to move.
Still, there was no sun.
No moon.
No single source from which the light could have come.
Only the two shadows stretching away from Isaac's feet.
He followed one with his eyes, then the other.
Both were too long.
Both pointed toward horizons that should not have shared the same hour.
A coldness settled in Isaac's chest that had nothing to do with the wind.
Slowly, he looked upward.
At first, the sky appeared endless.
Then he saw where it narrowed.
Far above him—so impossibly distant that his eyes struggled to hold its shape—the sky seemed to bend inward. The colours curved toward a single darkened point directly overhead, as though the entire desert existed beneath the bottom of something vast.
Isaac squinted.
It might have been a trick of the light.
A cloudless storm.
A distant opening.
Or an enormous wound in the sky.
The longer he looked, the less certain he became that it was merely far away. Distance behaved strangely here. The point above him seemed unreachable one moment and close enough to swallow him the next.
Something moved within it.
Isaac stepped back.
A thin stream fell from the narrowing sky.
He raised one hand.
A grain of sand landed in his palm.
Then another.
And another.
Isaac stared.
It was raining sand.
The grains were pale and fine, almost weightless. They collected along the shoulders of his black coat and caught in his still-damp hair. Against the strange light, each grain carried a faint shine before disappearing into the fabric.
For one absurd moment, Isaac almost laughed.
After everything—the creature, the mirror, the woman, the impossible desert—the gentle fall of sand seemed harmless.
Beautiful, even.
He brushed it from his palm.
The wind carried more.
The dry rain spread across the desert in thin veils, whispering against the dunes. There were no clouds above it and no storm to release it. It simply descended from the narrowed place in the sky.
Isaac continued walking.
He kept his head lowered and one hand over his eyes. Sand gathered inside the collar of his shirt and along the folds of his clothes. Some entered his shoes, scraping against his skin with every step.
He had walked only a short distance when the irritation began.
A faint sting touched the back of his hand.
Isaac rubbed it with his thumb.
The feeling sharpened.
He stopped and looked.
A small red mark had appeared where the grain had landed.
Isaac frowned.
Another sting touched his cheek.
Then his neck.
Then the skin above his wrist.
He brushed at himself, but instead of falling away, some of the grains clung to him. They sank against his skin as though absorbed by it.
The red mark on his hand widened.
Isaac watched the surface of his skin turn raw.
His breath caught.
He wiped it against his coat.
Pain tore through him.
Isaac gasped and pulled his hand back. A thin layer of skin had come away against the fabric, leaving wet, exposed flesh beneath it.
For several seconds, he could only stare.
His body healed everything.
Cuts closed before blood had time to dry. Broken bones repaired themselves. Burns faded. Illness passed through him without taking hold. Even age had failed to leave a mark.
But the wound on his hand did not close.
The sand continued to fall.
Another grain touched the exposed flesh.
Isaac screamed.
The sound escaped him before he could contain it. It was not the sharp pain of glass or the deep rupture of broken bone. It burned downward, past skin and blood, as if the grain were searching for something buried inside him.
He struck at his hand, trying to remove it.
More skin came away.
"No."
The word left him as a broken breath.
The sand thickened.
It fell across his shoulders, his face, his hair. Each grain brought another point of pain. Separate at first. Then dozens. Then hundreds.
Isaac ran.
He did not know where shelter might exist. There were no trees, no stones, no ruins—only dunes beneath the impossible sky. Still, his body obeyed the oldest instinct it possessed.
Escape.
His shoes sank into the burning ground.
The cold wind pushed against him.
The two shadows raced in opposite directions at his sides.
His phone slipped from his hand and disappeared into the sand, but Isaac did not stop. Pain had spread across his back and arms. His clothes offered no protection. The grains passed through fabric as though it were water, reaching the skin beneath.
His knees struck the ground.
The heat of the desert surged through his trousers.
Isaac cried out and forced himself upright, but his right leg failed. He fell again, catching himself with both hands.
The sand received them.
It began to consume him.
Flesh softened beneath his palms. His fingers reddened, split, then darkened along the joints. He pulled them toward his chest, but there was nowhere left to protect them.
His body tried to repair itself.
Isaac felt it happening.
Skin formed beneath the dissolving layers, only to be stripped away again. Tissue rebuilt itself as quickly as the sand destroyed it. Every nerve returned in time to feel the next wave.
For the first time in his long life, healing did not save him.
It prolonged him.
Isaac rolled onto his side, his body folding inward beneath the rain. He tried to cover his face. The sand gathered between his fingers and sank through them.
Pain erased the desert.
It erased the strange sky, the divided shadows, the life he had left behind.
There was no Habhay.
No Earth.
No creature.
No woman.
Only the endless destruction of his body and its stubborn refusal to surrender.
Isaac had known pain before.
He had been struck by vehicles. Crushed beneath collapsed walls. Burned, drowned, cut open, and left beneath disasters that had killed everyone around him.
But those pains had ended.
This one renewed itself.
Every wound healed only enough to become a wound again.
"Please," Isaac whispered.
He did not know whom he was begging.
The sand entered his mouth.
His throat burned.
He tried to cough, but the breath would not come. The inside of his chest seemed to tear with every attempt to inhale. His vision blurred, not into darkness, but into the two opposing colours of the sky.
Gold.
Violet.
Morning.
Evening.
Beginning.
End.
For one hundred and thirty-seven years, Isaac Abidan had wondered what death would feel like.
He had imagined silence.
He had imagined peace.
He had imagined his wife waiting somewhere beyond it, young again, smiling at him as though no time had passed between them.
He had never imagined sand.
His heartbeat weakened.
The intervals between each heartbeat grew longer.
His body continued fighting.
But Habhay was more patient.
Isaac's face sank against the burning ground. He could no longer feel his hands. He could no longer tell whether his eyes were open.
The pain began to recede.
Not because it had shown him mercy.
Because there was almost nothing left of him capable of feeling it.
Finally.
The thought came with no fear.
Only relief.
For the first time since he had buried his parents, Isaac allowed himself to believe that the next farewell would be his own.
His heart stopped.
And the desert erased what remained.
====
Isaac woke to the sound of breathing.
Not his own.
Several breaths surrounded him. Uneven. Dry. Too close.
He opened his eyes.
Faces stared down at him.
Isaac jerked away.
Pain struck the back of his head as it collided with something hard. The faces retreated, but only slightly, revealing bodies wrapped in mismatched layers of cloth, hide, and material Isaac could not name.
There were five of them.
Or perhaps six.
The room was too dim to be certain.
Isaac pressed himself against the surface behind him and tried to understand where he was.
The house—if it could be called a house—looked as though it had grown around its inhabitants instead of being built for them. The walls curved inward at uneven angles, made from pale stone, hardened sand, strips of dark wood, and fragments of an almost translucent material stitched together with thick black cords.
Nothing formed a straight line.
The ceiling leaned low over one side of the room and rose sharply over the other. Openings had been cut into the walls, but none were shaped like windows. One was narrow at the top and widened toward the floor. Another bent sideways, allowing a thin ribbon of violet light to enter.
Objects hung from the ceiling by threads.
Bones.
Pieces of metal.
Bundles wrapped in cloth.
Things Isaac could not identify.
They moved gently despite the absence of wind.
He looked again at the figures surrounding him.
Their faces were human enough to make their differences more disturbing.
One had skin gathered into deep, uneven folds, though the rest of their body appeared thin and small. Another possessed eyes too far apart, divided by a flattened bridge of a nose. A third had a jaw that leaned visibly to one side, forcing their lips into a permanent curve.
None looked alike.
None looked healthy.
But all of them were watching Isaac as though he were the strange one.
The smallest figure leaned closer.
Their eyes moved over Isaac's face, then down toward his chest and arms. Curiosity sharpened their stare. They seemed fascinated not merely by his presence, but by the fact that he had a body at all.
Across the room, another figure stood with both arms folded.
Unlike the others, they had not approached Isaac.
Their stare contained no curiosity.
Only anger.
Isaac lowered his gaze.
His black suit was gone.
He wore a loose piece of rough grey cloth wrapped around his waist and another draped across one shoulder. The skin beneath it was bare.
Unmarked.
He lifted his hands.
His fingers were whole.
The skin that had melted beneath the sand had returned without a scar.
Isaac touched his face.
Whole.
His throat.
Whole.
His chest rose beneath his palm.
His heart was beating.
"No," he whispered.
The curious figure tilted their head.
Isaac stared at his restored hands.
He remembered the sand entering his lungs. He remembered his body disappearing beneath it. He remembered his heartbeat slowing until—
Nothing.
"I died."
His voice sounded foreign inside the crooked room.
The angry figure released a bitter sound from the corner.
Not quite laughter.
"You did," they said.
Isaac looked up.
The figure's narrowed eyes remained fixed upon him.
"You were dead when we found you."
The curious one immediately turned toward them. "We do not know that."
"There was almost nothing breathing."
"That is not the same as dead."
"He had no skin."
The casual way the words were spoken made Isaac's stomach twist.
He looked down at himself again.
"How long?"
No one answered immediately.
The figures exchanged glances.
Finally, the smallest one held up both hands. They raised five fingers on one, then two on the other.
"Seven falls."
Isaac stared.
He did not understand the measurement, but he understood the number.
Seven.
Seven days.
A week.
He had lain somewhere in this impossible world for a week, without skin, without breath—or perhaps without life—and his body had quietly rebuilt itself.
The relief he had felt before death returned to him as something darker.
It had not been an ending.
Only another failed attempt.
The curious figure crouched beside him.
"Who are you?"
Isaac opened his mouth.
His name felt inadequate.
He had been Isaac Abidan on Earth. A father. A husband. A grandfather. A man who could not die.
But he did not know what any of those things meant here.
"Isaac," he finally said.
The figure waited, as though expecting more.
When Isaac offered nothing, their gaze travelled over his unchanged skin once again.
"Did you come from above?"
Isaac followed the direction of the stranger's eyes toward the crooked ceiling.
He remembered the darkened narrowing in the sky.
The place where the sand had begun to fall.
"I don't know."
The angry figure unfolded their arms.
"You answered the wrong question."
Isaac looked at them.
"They asked where you came from," the figure continued. "Not where you woke."
"I came from Earth."
Silence filled the room.
No recognition appeared on their faces.
Only suspicion.
The curious figure glanced toward the others.
"Is Earth above?"
"No," said the angry one.
"You do not know that."
"I know he is lying."
"I'm not," Isaac said.
The angry figure stepped forward. Others immediately shifted aside.
"You fell from the narrowing without a mark of the Upper Chamber. You burned in the passage. You remained ruined for seven falls. And now you have returned whole."
Their gaze hardened.
"So I will ask again. Did you come from above?"
Isaac forced himself to meet their eyes.
"I don't know where above is."
The smallest figure looked toward the curious one.
A thought seemed to pass between them—one neither wanted to speak first.
Then the smallest whispered:
"Do you think they have begun returning too?"
The curious figure's eyes remained on Isaac.
"Who?"
Isaac's question went unanswered.
The angry figure's expression changed.
For the first time, some of the hostility left their face.
What replaced it was worse.
Fear.
"The ones above us," the smallest figure said. "Have they also begun to live again and again?"
Isaac stared at them.
Also.
That single word settled more heavily than the rest.
He looked from one unpleasant, frightened face to another.
"You come back from death?"
The curious figure studied him for a long moment.
Then their features tightened with something Isaac could not yet recognize.
Not pride.
Not gratitude.
Certainly not hope.
"We do not come back," they said.
Their gaze dropped toward Isaac's restored hands.
"We simply fail to leave."
Isaac looked from one face to another.
The room had grown still around him.
Even the objects hanging from the crooked ceiling seemed to have stopped moving, as though the house itself were waiting for him to understand.
"You said I was dead," Isaac said.
The curious figure remained crouched beside him. "You were not breathing when we found you."
"That does not mean he was dead," another interrupted.
The voice belonged to the figure who had remained near the wall.
They stepped forward.
Isaac saw them more clearly now. One side of their face bore a deep, uneven hollow that pulled the skin toward the jaw. Their left eye appeared clouded, but the other—the one fixed upon Isaac—was sharp with hostility.
"You said there was almost nothing left of him," the smallest figure replied.
"Almost."
"He rebuilt."
"So can some of them."
The curious figure rose slowly.
"No."
The word was quiet, but firm.
The angry one faced them. "You have forgotten what they can do."
"I have forgotten nothing."
"Then do not pretend their limits are known to us."
The others shifted uneasily.
Isaac remained seated against the curved wall, his hands resting in his lap. He understood only fragments of the argument, but he understood enough.
They were not discussing whether they could trust him.
They were debating what kind of creature he was.
"Who are they?" Isaac asked.
No one answered.
The angry figure continued staring at him.
"You say you came from Earth."
"Yes."
"Where is Earth?"
"I don't know where it is from here."
"Above?"
"I told you—I don't know what 'above' means."
A bitter smile pulled at the uneven side of the stranger's mouth.
"He does not even lie well."
"I am not lying."
"Then you are hiding what you know."
"I woke in a desert," Isaac said, forcing his voice to remain steady. "Before that, I was inside my house. That is all I know."
The stranger's gaze moved across his face, down his shoulders, and toward his restored hands.
"You do not look like us."
The words entered the room without disguise.
Isaac glanced at the others.
None challenged them.
Some lowered their eyes. Others continued examining him with the same cautious curiosity, as though searching for a defect that would make him easier to accept.
Isaac knew that look.
He had seen it on Earth whenever strangers learned his age. Curiosity first. Disbelief afterward. Then suspicion, envy, or fear.
Different world.
Same gaze.
The curious figure spoke.
"He died and returned. Whatever he looks like, that makes him one of us."
"You did not see him die."
"We found what was left."
"You found what he wanted you to find."
"Why would anyone from above allow the sand to consume them?"
"To enter our home."
A murmur travelled through the room.
The smallest figure turned toward the angry one. "No one from above would endure that."
"You think pain frightens them?"
"I think death does."
The angry figure's eye returned to Isaac.
"Perhaps not anymore."
Silence followed.
The smallest figure looked toward the curious one, uncertainty entering their voice.
"Could the ones above have begun returning too?"
"No," the curious figure said quickly.
But the answer came too quickly.
Even Isaac heard the doubt beneath it.
Another figure spoke from beside the narrow opening in the wall.
"What if one of them learned to delay death?"
The group turned toward them.
They were older in appearance than the rest, though Isaac no longer trusted age as his eyes understood it. Their shoulders bent beneath layers of stitched cloth, and their fingers curled permanently inward.
"Delay it?" the smallest asked.
"Slow the body," the older figure replied. "Hold death beneath the skin until the damage passes."
The angry one's expression hardened.
Isaac looked down at his hands.
"That isn't what happened."
They ignored him.
"He could have survived the sand," the older figure continued. "Not as we survive it. By resisting it."
"He was without skin," said the curious one.
"Skin returns."
"His chest was still."
"Perhaps his heart stopped only long enough to deceive us."
Isaac swallowed.
He knew what he had felt in the desert.
His heart had stopped.
He remembered the final beat and the silence after it. He remembered the relief of believing that his long life had finally ended.
But he had only his memory.
These people had fear.
And fear was proving more persuasive.
"I am not from above," Isaac said.
The angry figure stepped closer.
"Then prove it."
Isaac held their gaze. "How?"
No one moved.
The room seemed to contract around them.
The curious figure turned sharply. "No."
Isaac looked between them.
"What does that mean?"
The angry one reached beneath the layered cloth around their waist.
The curious figure moved to block them, but the stranger shoved them aside. A short blade appeared in their hand, made from the same dark, unfamiliar material Isaac had seen stitched into the walls.
Several voices rose at once.
"Put that away."
"He has done nothing."
"We cannot keep him here."
"We cannot send him outside."
The angry figure did not look at any of them.
Their attention remained on Isaac.
"If you are one of us," they said, "this will not be your end."
Isaac pressed himself against the wall.
"And if I'm not?"
"Then it will be ours if I let you live."
The statement silenced the room.
Isaac looked at the others, waiting for someone to intervene.
The curious one had regained their footing. They reached for the stranger's arm.
"Do not do this."
The blade moved before they could stop it.
Isaac felt the impact against his chest.
For a moment, there was no pain.
Only shock.
His eyes lowered toward the stranger's hand and the dark handle held between them. His mind refused to understand how quickly the argument had become something irreversible.
The blade withdrew.
Isaac's hand rose instinctively toward his chest.
The second strike came before he could protect himself.
Then another.
Voices filled the crooked house. Someone seized the attacker from behind. Someone else pulled Isaac away, but his legs no longer obeyed him.
He fell against the uneven floor.
The room tilted.
Figures struggled above him, their bodies becoming shadows against the ribbon of violet light entering through the wall.
Isaac tried to breathe.
His chest would not rise properly.
The curious figure dropped beside him and pressed both hands over the wounds.
"Stay awake."
Isaac looked at them.
He almost laughed.
Stay awake.
As though consciousness had ever been the reason he remained alive.
The sounds around him began to fade.
The angry stranger was shouting from somewhere beyond Isaac's narrowing vision.
"If he is one of you, why are you afraid?"
Isaac could no longer see who held them.
"If he belongs below, he will return!"
The curious figure leaned closer.
Their hands trembled against Isaac's chest.
"You should not have come here," they whispered.
Isaac could not tell whether it was an accusation or an apology.
Perhaps both.
His heartbeat weakened.
He recognized the sensation now.
The slowing.
The growing distance between one beat and the next.
The strange release as his body surrendered what his mind had spent one hundred and thirty-seven years carrying.
This death was different from the desert.
The sand had been endless. Impersonal. It had destroyed him without anger because destruction was simply what it did.
This death carried a face.
A voice.
A choice.
Isaac thought of the woman standing beneath the rain.
Same as you, she had told him.
Was this what she had meant?
Not that these people would know him.
Not that they would welcome him.
Only that they, too, had been denied the right to leave.
The room darkened.
One heartbeat remained.
Then none.
For the second time in Habhay, Isaac Abidan died.