The desert at night was a different beast, with the crushing heat of the day gave way to a biting, invasive cold that seemed to rise from the ground itself.
The world existed only in silver and black beneath the stark wash of moonlight. Jacob set a relentless pace, his tall staff tapping a steady rhythm against stone and sand.
For me, every step was an ordeal. The fire in my thigh had dulled to a deep, throbbing ache, but the leg remained stiff and unreliable.
I leaned heavily on a sturdy branch Jacob had found for me, my body slick with cold sweat.
"Save your strength," Jacob grunted without looking back. "Don't talk. Just walk and breathe."
His words were clipped and practical, comfort had no place here and he was a man of survival, and our survival depended on reaching The Well before the temporary fix in my wound failed.
We walked in silence for hours, two insignificant figures crossing an endless and empty expanse. The loneliness of the wasteland pressed in like a physical weight, but Jacob's presence, however taciturn, kept despair from closing entirely around me.
He was a fixed point in my swirling absence of identity.
When the first pale hint of dawn brushed the eastern horizon, Jacob finally called a halt. We sheltered in the lee of a rock formation shaped like a cluster of massive, melted candles. He shared a strip of dried, leathery meat and a precious mouthful of water.
"The wind's changing," he said, staring at the surroundings . "See that? Air and fine dust. A glass throat is coming."
I smelled nothing beyond the dry, clean scent of sand. "A what?"
Jacob shot me a mildly irritated look. "A sandstorm. But the ones in this quadrant are bad. The sand's full of silicate fragments from the old city's meltdown. It will strip flesh from bone if you're caught out there. We need better cover."
The horizon was already staining itself a sickly yellow brown. A low moan began to rise, the distant voice of the storm then panic crept into my chest, cold and familiar.
Jacob was already scanning the terrain with unsettling focus.
"There," he said, pointing with his staff. "A fissure. Might be deep enough."
It was a narrow crack at the base of a low cliff, barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through. We scrambled toward it as the moan grew into a roar. The world behind us vanished beneath a wall of churning sand.
We slipped into the fissure just as the storm struck.
The force was staggering. It was not merely wind, but a solid, abrasive assault that scoured the rock face with the shriek of a thousand screaming blades.
Fine, cutting dust forced its way inside, stinging eyes and coating throats, with us huddled in the cramped darkness as the storm raged outside, its roar an unrelenting presence.
Hours passed.
Darkness became absolute with sound became pressure.
In that sensory void, my mind drifted.
A flash.
Not a memory, but an image. A chamber of polished white stone, sunlight pouring through a high, narrow window.
The scent of papyrus and dried herbs. A man's voice, deep and commanding, speaking the same ancient language carved into the stele.
"The vessel must be pure. The mind a blank scroll upon which the new consciousness can be written."
The vision shattered. Igasped in the dust choked darkness.
"What is it?" Jacob asked quietly beside me.
"Nothing," I lied, my heart hammering. "Just a bad dream."
A blank scroll.
The words echoed with terror. Was my amnesia no accident? Had I been made this way?
To steady myself, I focused on my hands, tying and retying a loose strap on my pack. Jacob's grip suddenly closed around my wrist. He produced a small shielded lantern, its dim glow filling the narrow space.
He stared at the knot I had tied.
"Where did you learn to tie a Khepri Coil?" he asked.
I frowned. "I don't know."
His voice tightened. "That knot was used by Pharaoh era tomb builders to secure rigging for moving sarcophagi. It hasn't been common knowledge for three thousand years."
I stared at the intricate loops my fingers had formed without thought.
"It just felt right," I whispered.
Jacob studied me with a mix of awe and deep suspicion. "Who in the hells are you?" he murmured, more to himself than to me.
The storm raged for most of the day. When it finally faded to a low whistle, we emerged into a transformed world. Dunes had shifted, ridges erased and rebuilt and the air was thick with dust, turning the afternoon sun into a dim red disc.
Jacob taught me how to read the land again. How to navigate by sun and shadow, how to find water hidden beneath the sand, drawn from thick rooted vines that stored bitter but life sustaining fluid.
He taught with patience and quiet authority, the historian in him surfacing as a teacher.
As we walked, he spoke of geology and mutation, of the blight and the fall. He told me of cities once made of glass and steel, of a time when water flowed from taps and the sky was not an enemy.
Somewhere along the way, a bond formed of forged from hardship and necessity. He was the keeper of memory while i was a man without one. The contrast was stark, yet it balanced us. He needed my strength and the mystery of the pendant I carried while I needed his knowledge to survive.
As the second dusk settled, we crested a high ridge.
Below us, cradled in a deep basin and ringed by jagged black cliffs, lay a splash of impossible green. At its heart, structures glinted in the dying light.
"There it is," Jacob said, relief softening his voice.
"The Well."