Rating: MA 15+
The desert taught through cruelty.
Three days after the rain—or what passed for rain in this broken world—Sabaku's lips had cracked open, blood mixing with sand on his tongue. His water had run out the previous morning, the last drops extracted from a depression in stone where moisture collected during the cold hours before dawn. Now even that source had dried, stone drinking deep what little the sky had offered.
He walked because stopping meant surrender. Each step cost more than the last, legs trembling with the kind of exhaustion that preceded collapse. The sun tracked overhead with malicious precision, its heat no longer merely uncomfortable but weaponized, pressing down like divine judgment.
This is how Aru died, Sabaku thought distantly. Walking until the body simply... stopped.
But something had changed since integrating those memories. His body—this body—moved with inherited knowledge, muscle memory from a life lived harsh. When the sun reached its apex, Sabaku found himself unconsciously seeking the shadow side of dunes, the cooler sand where evaporation slowed fractionally. His feet, without conscious direction, avoided the surface crust where heat concentrated, instead stepping on the looser particles beneath.
Aru's survival instincts, bleeding through.
"Thank you," Sabaku whispered to the ghost inside him. "For knowing what I don't."
The desert wind answered, carrying sounds that might have been words. Or might have been nothing. The line between real and imagined grew thinner with each hour of dehydration.
By what he judged as late afternoon—the sun angling toward the horizon but still mercilessly bright—Sabaku crested a dune and stopped.
Below, in a valley between sand mountains, lay the wreckage of something massive.
A city. Or the skeleton of one. Towers of metal and stone jutted from sand at impossible angles, architecture that suggested technology far beyond anything he'd seen in Khemet-Ra. Glass reflected sunlight in fractured rainbows. And everywhere, everywhere, the geometric precision of a civilization that had worshipped mathematics as other cultures worshipped gods.
Sabaku half-walked, half-slid down the dune, pulled by the promise of shade, of shelter, of anything other than the endless exposure. His feet touched the city's edge—a street paved with some material that felt like stone but rippled slightly under pressure, as if retaining memory of everything that had ever walked its surface.
The buildings rose around him, their shadows offering blessed relief. He stumbled into the darkest corner he could find and collapsed, back against a wall that hummed with residual energy. His eyes closed.
That's when he heard the mechanical whir.
Sabaku's eyes snapped open. He tried to stand but his legs refused, muscles locked in exhaustion. He could only watch as a figure emerged from deeper within the ruins.
At first glance: a person, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, with dark skin and hair braided with copper wire. She wore layers of scavenged cloth—practical, patched, stained with the red dust of deep desert. A mask covered the lower half of her face, revealing only sharp, suspicious eyes.
At second glance: her left arm wasn't flesh. From shoulder to fingertip, intricate metalwork that gleamed bronze and silver, joints moving with fluid precision that suggested craftsmanship beyond mere prosthetic. And her right leg—visible through torn pants—was similarly mechanical, pistons and gears working in silent harmony.
She carried a weapon—some kind of rifle, though its design was alien, organic curves merged with geometric precision. The barrel tracked toward Sabaku's head with disturbing steadiness.
"Don't move," she said, voice muffled by the mask but carrying clear authority. She spoke Egyptian, but with an accent Sabaku didn't recognize, syllables clipped shorter, emphasis shifted. "You're either dying or stupid to be out here without gear. Which is it?"
Sabaku tried to speak, but his throat seized, too dry for words. He could only stare at the weapon's barrel, seeing his distorted reflection in its dark lens.
The kids eyes narrowed. She approached cautiously, weapon never wavering, and kicked his leg with her mechanical foot—not hard enough to injure, but enough to test responsiveness.
"Dehydrated," she assessed clinically. "Maybe two days from system failure. No supplies, no protection. Definitely stupid." She tilted her head, studying him. "But you're breathing, which means you know at least basic survival. Desert born, maybe? Though that hair..." Her gaze fixed on his white hair with obvious suspicion. "Temple escapee?"
Sabaku managed a nod, the gesture costing enormous effort.
"Which temple?"
He swallowed painfully, forced syllables through his damaged throat: "Ra's... Left Hand."
The weapon's barrel dropped slightly. "Shit." The teenager lowered her mask, revealing a face marked with scars—thin lines across her cheeks and forehead, deliberate patterns that suggested ritual significance. But these scars were old, faded, worn with the dignity of survival rather than the fresh wounds of active torment.
She pulled a container from her belt—metal, etched with symbols that glowed faintly—and unscrewed the cap. Water. Actual water, clear and clean.
"Slowly," she instructed, holding the container to his lips. "Drink too fast and you'll vomit, waste it all."
Sabaku obeyed, taking small sips that felt like resurrection. The water tasted of minerals and something metallic, but it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever experienced. When she pulled the container away, he wanted to weep at its absence.
"More," she said, "but first, tell me your name."
"Sabaku." The name emerged automatically, and only after speaking did he realize he should have said Aru. But the kids expression shifted—recognition mixed with confusion.
"That's not Egyptian." She studied him with renewed intensity. "Where are you from? Really?"
Before he could formulate an answer that wouldn't sound insane, her mechanical hand shot forward, pulling the pendant from beneath his shirt. The bronze caught the filtered light, hieroglyphs suddenly vivid.
The kids breath caught. "No. That's not possible." She released the pendant as if it burned, backing away several steps. "Where did you steal that?"
"I didn't—"
"That's the mark of Ra's Forbidden Child. The myth. The legend." Her voice carried equal parts awe and fear. "Only one pendant like that exists, and the kid who wore it died a decade ago. The priests made certain. They displayed his body for weeks as warning."
Sabaku's hand closed around the pendant. "His name was Aru."
"Was." The kid emphasized the word. "Past tense. Dead. Gone. So either you robbed a grave—which, honestly, fair enough in this world—or..." She trailed off, mechanical fingers flexing unconsciously. "Or you're something much stranger."
"I died too," Sabaku said quietly. "In a different world. A different body. And I woke up here, wearing his face, carrying his memories." He met her suspicious gaze. "I know how that sounds. But it's true."
Silence stretched between them, broken only by wind whistling through broken buildings. The kids expression cycled through disbelief, calculation, and finally something that might have been resigned acceptance.
"In this desert," she said eventually, "I've seen things that make reincarnation seem mundane. Dead cities that walk at night. Sand that remembers violence and plays it back. Machines that dream in languages older than humanity." She shrugged, the gesture moving both flesh and metal shoulder in eerie synchronization. "A child wearing another kids soul? Sure. Why not."
She offered her mechanical hand. "Nahara. Scavenger, survivor, former temple property who cut herself free." When Sabaku clasped her hand—the metal warm from desert heat—she pulled him to his feet with strength that belied her frame. "And if you're really wearing Aru's memory, then you know why that pendant matters. Why the priests wanted him dead."
Sabaku searched Aru's memories, finding fragments: prophecy, forbidden texts, a child marked as catalyst for something the priests couldn't control. "The prophecy of ruin or rebirth."
"Exactly." Nahara released his hand and gestured deeper into the ruins. "Come on. We talk while we walk. Standing still in the open is how you die in this world. The Duneborn hunt by body heat, and you're radiating like a signal fire."
Sabaku followed her into the city's skeletal remains, his legs protesting every step but moving nonetheless. Nahara walked with mechanical precision, her prosthetic leg creating a rhythm—flesh step, mechanical step, flesh step, mechanical step—that was almost hypnotic.
"Why are you here?" Sabaku asked, voice still rough but functional.
"Scavenging. This was Tekthar-Nor, one of the last great cities before the Collapse. The engineers here merged bio-technology with ancient practices. Created wonders." She patted her mechanical leg. "Also created horrors. But the useful kind of horrors, if you know where to look."
They passed through what might have been a market square, stalls long empty but structures still standing. Nahara paused at one, running her hand along a surface that rippled like liquid metal, reforming under her touch.
"First rule of desert survival," she said without looking at him. "Drink from the shadow of stones. Water condenses where heat cannot reach. Lick the underside of rocks before dawn. It tastes like minerals and desperation, but it keeps you alive."
She moved to another structure, this one partially collapsed. "Second rule: sleep with your feet buried in sand. Not your whole body—that's how you wake up as a dune. But your feet. The sand regulates temperature. Keeps you warm in the night, cool in the day."
They climbed over rubble, Nahara's mechanical limbs managing the terrain with ease while Sabaku struggled to keep pace. She waited without comment when he fell behind, neither mocking nor helping, simply patient.
"Third rule," she continued when he caught up, "never look at the sun at noon. Not directly. Not even with your eyes closed. The sun here isn't like other suns. It sees. It judges. Look at it at its zenith and it looks back. And what it sees in you... that becomes your reality."
Sabaku thought of the sun's malicious presence, how it felt watched. "What do you mean, becomes your reality?"
Nahara stopped, turning to face him fully. "The sun shows you what you fear most, or what you desire most, and then it makes you live inside that truth until you die. I've seen scavengers look up at noon and immediately start screaming about deserts of ice, about oceans of fire, about cities where everyone they loved tears them apart. They're not here anymore. Mentally. They're in their personal hell, and their bodies just... wander until something kills them."
She resumed walking, adding over her shoulder, "So keep your eyes down at noon. Always."
They reached what appeared to be a central plaza, dominated by a massive statue—or what remained of one. A figure that might have been human, might have been divine, its features eroded by sand and time until only the suggestion of form remained. At its base, symbols glowed with faint bioluminescence.
Nahara knelt, pulling tools from her pack—delicate instruments that looked like a surgeon's kit merged with archaeological equipment. She began carefully excavating around the statue's foundation.
"What are you looking for?" Sabaku asked.
"Power cores. The old civilization—the one that existed before the Collapse—they built machines that ran on solar energy filtered through biological processors. Essentially, they taught cells to eat sunlight and excrete electricity." She worked as she spoke, mechanical fingers surprisingly deft. "These cores are worth more than water in some settlements. Power means light. Light means security. Security means survival."
Sabaku sat nearby, grateful for the rest. Around them, the city whispered. Not metaphorically—actual sounds emerged from the buildings. Echoes of conversations in languages he didn't recognize. Laughter that sounded wrong, pitched too high or too low. And underneath it all, a steady mechanical pulse, as if the city itself had a heartbeat.
"Does it bother you?" he asked. "The sounds?"
"Cities remember," Nahara replied, not looking up from her work. "Especially ones that died violently. They play back their last moments on loop. You get used to it. Or you go mad. Not much middle ground."
She extracted something from the excavation—a sphere roughly the size of a fist, translucent and filled with swirling light that might have been liquid or energy or something in between. She held it up triumphantly.
"Perfect. Still charged. This will keep me supplied for months." She wrapped it carefully in cloth and stored it in her pack. "Your turn. Tell me how a child from another world ends up wearing the face of legend."
Sabaku told her. Not everything—the full story would take hours—but the essential truth. Tokyo. The orphanage. The massacre. His obsession with Egypt. His death wish granted in the most horrific way. Waking in Aru's body. The visions. The integration of memories.
Nahara listened without interruption, her expression unreadable. When he finished, she sat back against the statue's base.
"The desert calls people," she said finally. "Some hear it in dreams. Some hear it in their blood. It's not random. The desert chooses. And if it chose you..." She met his eyes. "Then there's a reason. Maybe you're meant to finish what Aru started. Maybe you're meant to fulfill the prophecy. Or maybe you're just another offering, and the desert is digesting you slowly."
"Cheerful thought."
"I don't do cheerful. I do realistic." She stood, brushing sand from her clothes. "But I'll tell you what I do know: that pendant makes you valuable. To the right people, you're a symbol. To the wrong people, you're a threat. And in this desert, being either one means you're walking leverage."
The wind picked up, carrying that strange two-toned quality Sabaku had noticed before. Like voices harmonizing with themselves. Nahara's posture shifted, body tensing.
"Do you hear that?" Sabaku whispered.
"Yeah." Her hand moved to her weapon. "The desert's talking. That means something's listening."
The voices grew clearer, rising from the dunes surrounding the city. And they weren't just sounds—they were names. His names.
"Sssssabaku..."
"Aruuuuu..."
The two names overlapped, intertwined, echoing from different directions simultaneously. Nahara's eyes widened.
"That's new," she said tersely. "The desert doesn't usually know specifics. It calls in generalities. 'Child.' 'Wanderer.' 'Meat.' Never names. Never two names for one person."
The voices intensified, and the sand began to move. Not wind-driven movement, but purposeful. Currents running through dunes like water, patterns forming and dissolving. And from those patterns, shapes began to emerge.
Figures. Human-shaped but wrong. Composed entirely of sand that held form through impossible cohesion. They rose from the desert floor like swimmers breaching water, their features blank except for hollow spaces where eyes should be.
"Sand revenants," Nahara hissed. "Manifestations of the desert's memory. They're drawn to strong emotions, to unresolved deaths. Aru must have left quite an impression when he died here."
There were dozens of them now, surrounding the city, all turning their blank faces toward Sabaku. The names continued, called from sand-formed mouths:
"Sabaku-Aru... Aru-Sabaku... Two souls... One flesh... The desert remembers... The desert claims..."
Nahara grabbed his arm. "We run. Now. These things don't kill—they absorb. They pull you into the sand and add your consciousness to the desert's collective memory. You become part of the whispers."
They ran. Through the city's ruins, Nahara leading with the certainty of someone who'd mapped escape routes before entering. Behind them, the sand revenants pursued with horrible patience, not fast but relentless, flowing over obstacles like liquid.
Sabaku's exhausted body protested every movement, but fear provided fuel that water couldn't. They vaulted over collapsed walls, squeezed through narrow passages, climbed scaffolding that groaned under their weight.
The desert voices followed, always close:
"We remember you, Aru... We remember your pain... Your mother's screams... Your final breath... Join us... Become memory... Become eternal..."
"Don't listen!" Nahara shouted over the cacophony. "They're trying to make you remember so strongly you forget to run!"
They burst from the city's far edge, hitting open desert at full sprint. Nahara's mechanical leg drove pistons that augmented her speed, and she half-dragged Sabaku along, his shorter legs struggling to maintain pace.
Behind them, the sand revenants reached the city's edge and stopped. Simply stopped, as if hitting an invisible barrier. They stood at the boundary, blank faces tracking the runners' retreat.
"We will wait..." the voices called after them. "The desert is patient... The desert is forever... You will return to us... All roads end in sand..."
Nahara didn't slow until they'd crossed three dunes, putting significant distance between them and the city. Finally, she released Sabaku's arm and they both collapsed, gasping.
"What..." Sabaku wheezed. "What were those?"
"Memory made hostile. The desert's immune system, maybe. Or its conscience." Nahara pulled off her mask, gulping air. "I've encountered them before, but never that coordinated. Never calling specific names. They usually just grab whoever gets too close to their territory."
She looked at him with new wariness. "You're not just carrying Aru's memory. You're carrying his presence. His unfinished business. The desert recognizes that. Wants to resolve it."
"By absorbing me?"
"By making you part of the eternal record. The desert keeps everything—every death, every scream, every final wish. It's like a library written in suffering." She replaced her mask, adjusting its fit. "But if we're careful, we can use that. The desert's memory contains answers. Prophecies. Locations of things thought lost."
Sabaku struggled to sitting position, body shaking with aftershock adrenaline. "Like what?"
"Like the Temple of Inverse Shadows. Where Ra's Left Hand keeps their deepest secrets. Where they'd have records of Aru's prophecy—and maybe how to fulfill it without dying." She stood, offering him her hand again. "But it's three days' journey from here, through some of the most hostile terrain in the desert. You up for that?"
Sabaku looked at the offered hand—half flesh, half machine, scarred by survival. He thought of Tokyo's gray walls and institutional indifference. He thought of Aru's torture and defiant final breath. He thought of the promise he'd made to a ghost who lived inside him.
He took Nahara's hand.
"Teach me to survive," he said. "And I'll help you find whatever you're looking for in those temple ruins."
Nahara pulled him upright, something that might have been respect flickering in her eyes. "Deal. But first lesson, starting now: the desert will test you every step. Every moment. And the only way to pass is to refuse to die until you've proven your point."
"What's your point?" Sabaku asked.
"That I'm meaner than the desert." She grinned, the expression fierce. "What's yours?"
Sabaku looked back toward Tekthar-Nor, where sand revenants still waited at the boundary, patient as death. He touched the pendant beneath his shirt.
"That forgotten children matter," he said quietly. "That every lost soul deserves to be remembered. Not absorbed. Not erased. Remembered."
Nahara nodded slowly. "Then we understand each other." She started walking, mechanical leg leaving precise prints in sand. "Keep up. And remember: eyes down at noon."
Sabaku followed her into the endless dunes, two forgotten children walking toward uncertain destiny, watched by a sun that saw too much and remembered everything.
Behind them, the desert whispered their names—both of them—and waited to see which version would survive.
TO BE CONTINUED...