The winds were quiet tonight.
But not silent.
If one stood still enough … feet buried in the cool sands of Qamar, eyes closed, heart open … they would hear it.
A faint, impossible song.
The sound of two names tangled in the air like threads of gold.
The sound of a love too strange, too beautiful, too eternal to ever truly sleep.
Some said the desert had finally swallowed her.
That Layla had become no more than a ghost, a story told to frighten children away from the dunes at dusk.
But those who listened closely knew better.
For on certain nights, when the moon was low and the stars breathed bright, the sands shimmered faintly … alive, restless, remembering.
And a figure could sometimes be seen at the edge of the dreamland:
a girl with dark hair and a wind-worn scarf, her bare feet leaving no prints behind.
And beside her… a shadow of gold.
Fractured still, but whole in her presence.
His whispers woven into her ribs, his light wrapped around her heart.
"Dreamer," his voice would say, low and soft, always soft.
"Do you hear it?"
And she'd smile faintly, her eyes shining with something vast and unspoken.
"I do," she'd reply. "The winds… they remember."
But even as they walked deeper into that shimmering horizon, a new sound was rising.
Not the darkness this time … but something older, stranger.
A calling neither of them could yet name.
Somewhere beyond the dunes, another Door waited.
And beyond that Door… another choice.
Another story.
Another battle.
For even love as wild as theirs could not outrun what was coming.
Not forever.
And as the sands sighed beneath their feet, and the winds rose to carry them forward,
Layla heard Malik's whisper again … quiet and full of promise:
"Then let the winds carry us farther still…"
"To where even memory cannot follow…"
"To where stars are born…"
"To where the dream begins again."
And so they walked on.
Hand in hand.
Mad and in love.
Toward a future only the winds could see.
Toward the next chapter.