Ares stepped through 726 with anger in his chest. It was a small, tight flame—enough to make him move before he could talk himself out of it.
The gray world waited. White stone. Pale sand. A dead sky. Behind him, the door sat like a black square cut into the waste. He kept it in view. He told himself he would not be thrown out again without a word.
He walked.
The sand was loose and fine. It slid under his boots and filled the seams. Each step hissed. He scanned the horizon for the crooked shack and the rocking chair, for the old man's sharp eyes. Nothing. Only the same flat color in every direction.
He stopped and scooped sand into his hands. The grains were cold and damp. He threw them up and watched them fall.
"Show yourself," he muttered.
The sand fell the way sand always falls. Nothing answered. He tried again, a little farther out, and again after that. His palms turned red from the scrape. Grit worked under his nails. Sweat glued his shirt to his back. It felt stupid, but it also felt necessary.
He kept the doorway in sight. He told himself he was fine. Then he looked back once more and felt his stomach dip.
The door was farther away than it should have been.
"That's too far," he said under his breath.
He angled back toward it until it grew a little larger. He controlled his breath and cleared his mind. He tried to remember exactly where the old shack had stood. He shut his eyes, pictured the rocking chair, the fishing rod with its line hanging into bare air. He stepped the way he thought he had stepped before.
He opened his eyes. Only the waste—empty and humid. Another failure.
Ares ground his teeth. He took the small stone Emma had given him and rolled it in his palm. It hummed once. Her name sat on the edge of his tongue.
He remembered the old man's hatred for her and how quickly she had left. Calling Emma would not help his case.
He closed his fist around the stone and pushed it back into his pocket.
He tried a different tactic. He picked a spot in the sand and walked until his boots touched it. Then he threw another handful of sand ahead like a fisherman casting a net. Grains spread and fell. For a second, something disturbed the pattern.
He froze.
There—just at the edge of his vision—the air pinched. Light bent, not much, like heat over a road. When the last grains dropped, the bend vanished.
Ares scooped again and threw. The sand shaped itself around nothing and fell. Alarmed, he took a step, then another, throwing small fans of sand in tight arcs.
Shapes formed for a heartbeat when the sand passed through them. Not shapes he knew. Not a man or a house. A starfish in the air. Then a thin pillar. Then a vague arm of something reaching and not reaching at the same time. It was all incomplete, like his eyes could only see one slice of it at once.
He felt no threat. He did not feel welcome either. He felt watched.
"Is this you?" he called. "Are you hiding?"
The shape did not answer.
He moved a little farther. He looked back at the entrance—it was too far. He forced himself to stop. He walked back until the black square grew bigger, then angled the search so it stayed on his left. Sand stuck to his wrists and hair. It clung to the sweat on his neck. Every throw made his hands sting.
His anger turned dull. It became a heavy ball behind his ribs. He started to feel stupid again. He also started to feel tired.
"I'm not going to find him like this," he said. "Not like this."
He went back to the door and stood where he could see both the threshold and the open waste. He closed his eyes and tried to rebuild the shack from memory. Emma's voice. The gray light. The rocking chair. He pictured the shack just past a patch of ground that looked like all the rest. He pictured her hand lifting, the air shivering, the place revealing itself.
He walked that memory forward. He opened his eyes.
Nothing.
"Dammit!" Ares cursed as he crouched and let the sand run through his fingers. He wanted to give up. The dark room without doors didn't seem so bad compared to his dead world. He wanted to sleep. He wanted the old man to stop playing games and just speak.
The anger sparked again.
He scooped a new handful and flung it—hard—off to the left.
The sand revealed a face that hadn't been there a blink before.
Some of it hit an eye.
Ares froze. The shape finished itself as if the sand gave it edges. The old man stood there in simple clothes, the fishing rod resting against his shoulder, his eyes very sharp and very flat. A few grains stuck to his lashes. He did not blink.
"I'm—" Ares' throat went dry. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were— I only wanted to— I just want to talk."
Rodman did not move. He looked at Ares for a single long beat, and in that beat Ares felt like a bug pinned on velvet. No anger rolled off the old man now. He just stood there, staring without blinking.
"It was sand," Ares said, too fast. "I thought—wait, listen to me, please. I don't have magic like you. I can't see. I—"
Rodman lifted one finger and flicked it through the air.
The world refused Ares.
It bent without sound, as if the gray realm had pushed him away on instinct. He blinked and stood in the hallway again, breath steady, body unharmed. Pale bars of light stretched across the floor. The number 726 waited on the iron.
He stared at it and felt his face heat. Shame pressed his shoulders down. Anger pressed back up. Somewhere under both of them was the memory of working with his dad. A faint whisper now, but he remembered: "The hardest part is showing up. Keep at it. Again and again. Only consider it a failure when you give up."
Ares shut his eyes and breathed.
Not failure. Try again.
He opened his eyes and looked at his scraped hands. They hurt in a real, ordinary way. He could use that. It meant he had done something true, even if it was stupid.
He wiped the sand off on his robe, then stopped and brushed it away more carefully. He tied his hair back so it would stop catching the grit. He took the stone out again and let it hum against his skin.
"Not yet," he said to it. "Not for this."
He set his palm on the handle.
"I will not give up," he said to the door, to the man beyond it. "I will find a way."
He drew a slow breath. He had almost forgotten his original purpose—the lens, magic—everything drowned under the goal of getting a rise out of the old man. "You don't want to teach me? Well, tough luck, you don't have a choice."
Then he stepped back into the gray sands, his goal clear.
A few days later
Ares looked like a sand column—skin gray with dust, hair knotted with grit. He hurled sand in wide arcs and the plain woke up.
Shapes appeared around him. Countless. A hovering starfish. Thin pillars that wavered like reeds. Ribs of air curving in and out. Flat discs turning edge-on. Veils that rippled without wind. For the first time, he could keep them in view even after the sand fell; their edges held where the light bent wrong.
"I will break your fucking nose, you stupid old man?" he shouted at nothing. "Talk to me!"