The first sound that escaped Thales' throat was a groan. He pushed himself upright, blinking through the blur that clouded his vision. His fingers dug into coarse grains. The sand was endless, swallowing everything in sight.
The night air was cold enough to bite but the desert around him looked endless, folding into itself in slow, rippling dunes that shimmered faintly under a crescent moon. Verdamona stirred beside him, muttering something under her breath that sounded more like a curse than a word. Her hair was dusted with fine gold from the sand.
"Where the hell are we?"
Thales didn't answer right away. He brushed the sand from his coat and turned in a slow circle. The horizon was nothing but darkness pressed against more darkness. There was no sign of Phaser, Hinesia or Xaessia.
"I don't know, but it's not Rome."
Verdamona scoffed. "Brilliant observation."
The sarcasm was a comfort in its own way. He could hear the faint shake in her tone, masked by attitude. It wasn't like her to sound unsure.
The stars moved.
IlThales frowned, blinking against it. The constellations were shifting. Points of light dragged across the heavens in slow arcs, sliding into unnatural alignments. A tremor passed through the ground beneath them. Verdamona noticed it too.
"Thales, tell me you're seeing this."
"I wish I wasn't."
The stars bent and twisted until they formed glowing words that were enormous and impossibly clear against the velvet sky.
[HEAD HERE.]
Beneath the words, a string of stars curved into an arrow pointing toward the horizon. For a long time, neither of them spoke.
The wind howled again, threading through their clothes. Thales's pulse was pounding, not from fear exactly, but from the eerie certainty that whatever had moved the stars could see them. Verdamona broke the silence with a single, nervous laugh.
"You know… people always say they want a sign from the heavens. I think we just got one."
"Yeah. And it's creepy as hell. We might as well follow it."
"Seriously?"
"Look around. It's sand as far as the eye can see. We can stay here and freeze to death or, follow the ominous glowing arrow from the sky."
Verdamona sighed, brushing sand off her boots. "You make it sound so appealing."
Still, she followed when he started walking. The silence of the desert wasn't true silence. There were faint sounds buried in it. Like wind and footsteps that weren't theirs.
They didn't mention it.
"So, what do you think this trial is supposed to be?"
Thales thought for a moment. "Could be this. We could be just walking with no direction or end. Maybe it's supposed to break us down."
"Maybe it's supposed to drive us insane first."
He cracked a faint, humorless smile. "Phaser did give us supplies."
"You think he knew?"
"He always knows. The question is, what do we learn from this?"
Verdamona didn't answer. Her eyes traced the dunes ahead. Each dune looked identical to the last and yet the air around them grew heavier, like wading through invisible water. Time was strange here. Maybe minutes passed. Maybe hours. The stars never shifted or moved from their worded message. 'HEAD HERE' was still pulsing faintly, still mocking them from above.
By the time they reached the next rise of sand, Verdamona's breath came out in visible wisps. She paused, resting her hands on her knees.
"This isn't normal. The temperature's dropping too fast."
Thales looked up again. The stars were closer now, or maybe brighter. He wasn't sure which scared him more. They looked… aware, as if they were eyes pretending to be stars, blinking once every few minutes, watching the two figures struggle through their maze of sand.
"You feel that?"
Verdamona straightened, squinting. "Feel what?"
He hesitated for a while.
"I don't know, but I think the desert's… breathing."
Verdamona's lips pressed into a thin line. "Don't say things like that."
They walked again, faster this time. Neither wanted to look back, though both felt the pull of something behind them.
Hours — or what felt like them — passed before Thales spoke again.
"Verdamona, if this is a trial… maybe the point isn't to reach the end."
"Then what?"
"Maybe it's to see if we keep walking."
She looked at him, the moonlight cutting across her face.
"Then we walk."
Verdamona's boots sank into the sand, the faint crunch swallowed instantly by the cold wind. They had been walking for what felt like forever. The stars had not shifted from their message.
But then, she stopped.
"Thales."
He turned slightly, catching the unease in her face.
"Something wrong?"
She looked over her shoulder into the rippling darkness behind them. There was nothing visible but her instincts screamed at her that something was behind them.
"Do you hear that?"
Thales paused, listening. He heard a distant shuffle that tried to mimic footsteps and failed.
"Yeah. I do."
Verdamona's fingers twitched at her side. "Should we look back?"
Before Thales could respond, the stars shifted again. Every constellation twisted, contorted and burst into a new alignment so fast it hurt to watch. The entire horizon ahead of them became a sheet of blinding, white starlight spelling out words that stretched from end to end of the sky:
DON'T LOOK BACK.
The message burned bright enough to reflect on the sand, filling the dunes with ghastly illumination. The light quivered like it was alive. Verdamona's throat went dry.
"That's— That's not funny anymore. Thales, I'm serious. What is this?"
Thales's eyes stayed locked on the stars. His jaw tightened.
"Something doesn't want us to look."
Verdamona swallowed hard. "Yeah, well, I kind of want to."
"No. If the sky tells you not to—"
But she was already shaking, the back of her neck prickling as if something was crawling up her spine. The sound behind them had stopped. The air was still. Thales exhaled through his teeth and clenched his hand. The ground rumbled faintly as a massive sword burst from the sand beside them.
"Climb on."
"What?"
He swung himself onto the flat of the blade and offered a hand. "If we can't look back on foot, we'll look from above."
She hesitated, then grabbed his arm and climbed on. The moment both their feet were steady, Thales snapped his fingers and the sword shuddered, rising into the air. The sand spiraled beneath them as the massive weapon lifted them skyward. Verdamona's breath hitched. The desert looked endless from above.
"Okay, now what—"
She couldn't finish her words.
At first, it looked like a lump of bone half-buried in sand before it moved. It was a humanoid shape that was too tall and too long-limbed. It stood maybe four meters high, completely white. Its head was smooth and featureless, like a mask that had forgotten its face.
It was standing exactly where they had been moments ago.
Thales felt his stomach twist. The thing was motionless, yet every part of him screamed told him to run. He forced the sword higher, the blade vibrating faintly under his control. Verdamona couldn't breathe. Her eyes were wide, fixed on that pale silhouette far below. Her heart hammered too fast.
"What the hell is that—"
The creature moved.
Its head rotated all the way backward until it faced them. It did a full one hundred and eighty degrees, like its neck had no bone or muscle. With no warning, it jumped.
The motion was too fast. It was like gravity didn't apply.
"Verdamona, hold on!"
She screamed, summoning her whip. The weapon cracked through the air with a sonic boom as the creature hurtled toward them. She lashed it mid-air, slicing through its chest with one powerful strike. The sound was wet and wrong, like tearing paper underwater.
The thing split apart. Two halves of that white body fell back toward the sand, twitching violently. Thales summoned smaller swords, flicking his fingers. Dozens of them rained down, impaling the falling creature. Sand exploded in a ring around the corpse, but when the dust settled, the body was already sinking, vanishing beneath the dunes like it was being pulled under.
Verdamona's chest was heaving. The whip dissolved in her hand.
"I— I can't—"
Her voice broke and she clutched her chest.
Thales turned to her quickly. "Hey, it's gone. You're fine—"
She shook her head violently. "No. No, I'm not fine. I can't— big things— I can't—"
It hit him then. Verdamona had megalophobia, which was a deep, irrational terror of massive, looming things. Even just watching that creature tower over them had her trembling. He placed a steadying hand on her shoulder.
"Hey. I'm sorry."
She blinked through tears, confused. "Why are you— sorry?"
Thales's eyes moved downward. "Because… that wasn't the only one."
Verdamona followed his gaze.
At first, it didn't make sense. The dunes below looked like they were covered in faint white shapes glimmering in the starlight. But then her eyes adjusted, and she realized what they were.
Tens of thousands of those creatures were standing on every dune of the horizon. All of them were perfectly still and facing up, looking directly at them.
Verdamona froze. Her body went cold. Her breath stopped mid-chest.
"Thales…"
He couldn't answer. The sword hovered silently. The horizon wasn't dunes anymore. It was an ocean of staring bodies, motionless and waiting.
Then, all at once, every single head tilted back in unison at 180 degrees, snapping to face them completely.
The stars flickered violently overhead.
YOU SAW THE FACELESS. RUN.
And for the first time, Thales felt real terror.
"Well shit."