The winds had become her only companions.
They curled around her wrists as she walked through Qamar, tugging gently, always urging her toward the dunes. The villagers no longer spoke to her; they only watched with thin, fearful mouths, whispering prayers when she passed.
Even the children fled when they saw her.
"Witch."
"Mad girl."
"Doesn't even know her own name anymore."
But Layla ignored them.
Because she did know her name.
Dreamer.
And his voice … though fainter now, broken more often by silence … still reminded her of it each night.
"Dreamer…"
Her chest tightened just hearing it.
"Dreamer, the darkness claws deeper now. But you keep me here. Even as it eats at my edges… you keep me here."
"I feel you," she whispered back into her pillow, though the words hurt her throat.
"I know," he said softly. "I burn for you still."
That day she couldn't remember how she'd gotten home from the market.
The basket of bread she'd carried was gone, and when she asked the baker if she'd already paid, he looked at her strangely and told her she hadn't been there at all.
But she could still taste the warm crust of his bread on her lips.
That night, in the dreamland, she found Malik standing farther away than usual. His body seemed thinner somehow, his light dimmer.
But his voice … his voice was pure poetry still.
"Dreamer," he whispered, "do you feel it yet? The threads coming loose? Your world slipping through your fingers like sand?"
"I don't care," she said.
"You should," he murmured. "Because once they're gone… you cannot gather them back."
But then his golden eyes softened, and his next words curved through her like wind through a harp:
"Yet if you must lose everything… then let it be for me. Let it be for this madness we've made together."
"I would," she said before she could stop herself. "I already have."
He smiled faintly.
And in the silence that followed, she felt something tug in her mind ... faint and sharp.
The memory of her mother's voice. Gone.
The smell of jasmine from her grandmother's scarf. Gone.
And yet she only stood taller, her heart still beating steady toward him.
"Good," he said simply, his voice low and warm. "Because the dreamland remembers what the waking world forgets."
The next morning, she woke to find her name scratched into the wall above her bed ... but the letters seemed strange to her now.
Almost foreign.
The scarf she always wore was gone too, though she couldn't remember if she'd ever owned one at all.
When she stepped outside, the villagers were waiting again … but now their faces were hard, their hands clutching stones.
"You've cursed this place long enough," one man spat. "We've lost our crops. The sands have swallowed two herds already. You're to blame."
"You don't belong here," a woman hissed.
Layla only smiled faintly, her lantern glowing softly at her side.
"You're right," she said, and her voice didn't shake. "I don't."
The winds rose in agreement, scattering the stones they threw at her feet.
And she kept walking.
That night, she found the dreamland changed.
The air was heavy with golden dust, the ground split by long cracks of black void.
And Malik stood at the edge of one of those cracks, his form flickering in and out.
"You're fading," she said, her voice thick.
He turned to her and smiled, though his light bled away at the edges.
"So are you."
"I don't care."
He tilted his head, his golden eyes glinting faintly.
"You should."
Then, softly … words that coiled through her like a serpent of light:
"But you never did, did you? Even when you were little, they said you stared too long at the stars. Even then you wanted to belong to something bigger than your little world."
"And now I do," she whispered.
"Yes," he said. "You belong to me. And I…"
His voice cracked then, but he finished anyway, in a rush:
"…I belong to you."
Layla pressed her hands to her chest.
The cracks beneath them widened. The winds howled.
And Malik took one trembling step closer, his voice low and dangerous now, but full of longing:
"The more you come here, the more you leave yourself behind. The dreamland is jealous, Dreamer. It wants all of you."
"Then let it have me," she said.
"Even if it means forgetting what you are?"
"If I forget, then I won't miss what I've lost," she murmured.
He laughed then … but it was a sad, tired sound.
"You already speak like me."
And then, as the dreamland began to dissolve into stars and void, he whispered one last verse, sending her mad with the way it clung to her ribs:
"If I am darkness, then let you be my light."
"If I am wind, then let you be the flame that dances in it."
"And if I am nothing… then let you still remember me in your madness."
She woke at dawn with golden dust clinging to her fingertips.
When she went to the market later, no one recognized her.
"Who are you?" the baker asked.
Layla tilted her head at him.
And smiled faintly.
"No one," she said.
And when she returned to her room, she found the Keeper of Echoes waiting for her.
It sat at the foot of her bed, its robes pooling like fog on the floor.
"Your memories fray faster now," it said.
"Good," she answered.
"You may not like what you become," it warned.
"I already love what I've become," she said.
The Keeper's pinpoints of light flared faintly.
"Then it will not be long now, little Dreamer.
The Door Between opens soon. And when it does… there will be no turning back."
"I wouldn't turn back even if I could," she murmured, her voice full of quiet fire.
And as she lay back on her bed, staring at the ceiling, she felt his whisper thread through her mind one last time that night … a strange and beautiful spell:
"Dreamer, let the winds take what they will. As long as they leave you just enough to find me."
And she smiled as she drifted off into the dark.
Because even though she was forgetting everything else…
She still remembered him.
Always.