The plain's wind reached me first—an iced gasp that scraped the rim of my visor and etched a lace of frost across the glass. I hunched deeper into my hood and pressed on, counting paces so the silence had no gap to enter. Every fifteen steps I changed cadence; every thirty, I veered a fraction, like an animal that senses invisible snares. Night appreciates such gestures: it rewards those who refuse straight lines and punishes the confident with roads that loop back on themselves.
The ground went saline. Crusts of crystal shattered beneath my soles with the crunch of glass. I kept my eyes down: the earth was enough—an uneven chessboard of white scales and black seams just steep enough to make ankles work. A blister wept between skin and sock, hot as a tear; I ignored it, refusing to grant flesh importance when the air demanded attention.
Far ahead rose a curved shape, a ruin half-devoured by grey dunes. I didn't lift my head; peripheral vision was enough to know it was a broken dome, its shattered arch reflecting a cold light. I skirted it in a wide arc. Each grain of sand sliding off my boot sounded like rats moving through metal ducts. Another might grow used to it; I decided such music was a constant warning.
Within the whitish glow the salt-flat darkened—no cloud-shadow, for it lacked clear edges. I crouched and touched the surface. The cracked crust revealed a layer of damp stone. My fingertips smelled of tarnished copper. I scraped deeper; a viscous film clung beneath my nails. When I tasted it, the sweetness was cloying—either a corpse or a fermenting underground lake. The distinction meant little: both advised me not to camp.
Yet the jade pendant's steady hum eased, as though this were the right path. For an instant I accepted the comfort; everything else felt like conspiracy, so an object offering certainty stolen from ancient mineral seemed an ally. The jade pulsed—barely—hinting at something undiscovered. I turned slowly on my heels: the vibration levelled out. Turning back, at one precise angle the pulse intensified. I stayed there. It was the only signal, and human senses matter little when the sky dissolves and the earth holds too many shut mouths.
A shallow drop, two metres down—a fossilised channel perhaps—exhaled warmer air into the frozen night. I slid into the gouge, heels braking scree. The smell was standing water and rust, and somewhere inside a drip kept time. I breathed until the cadence sounded inside my chest—a constant gnawing—then followed it. The channel walls were polished, rock untouched by tools: millennia of abrasion. Running my hand along them I felt hair-fine grooves and imagined the ancient current that carved them.
Deeper in, a well lay black as exposed marrow. Water at the bottom caught a stolen point of light—perhaps a wink of sky. I refrained from checking. Filling my canteen half-way, I tasted. Bitter, like old metal, but the tongue didn't burn. Two gulps. Chest loosened. The drip remained, clock-true. I resisted dunking my head in that mirror.
Stowing the canteen, my lamp flickered. The nearby wall borrowed the tremor, sketching an oval that advanced and retreated, existing only while the light shuddered. I clenched the lamp; its beam steadied. The oval vanished—only damp plaster. I zipped my collar and back-tracked, keeping my boot noise distinct from any other step.
Outside, the whole plain vibrated. The wind returned sharper, raising a flour of crystals that coated my cloak. Instinct said do not stop. When the crystals became fossil scales I turned; the ground crunched differently and smelled of charred wood. Laminated black sheets overlapped, lifting as I passed. Each fragment broken released an acid tang. I prised one up: the underside showed reddish-brown capillary channels like tree roots, finer than hair. *Sediments keep the memory of earlier worlds,* we children of the Pyramid were told without understanding. Here the weight of it hit me. I dropped the shard and moved on.
A mineral forest rose among the sheets: conical columns, all leaning, some twisted like giant ligaments. Wind striking them produced a hum—tempered metal vibrating. I chose a corridor between rows and advanced, counting paces to hold a steady beat. The hum climbed pitch by pitch, as if the air were tuning an instrument, and soon my blood waltzed to it, every heartbeat echoing in my throat. When my knees began to answer a foreign rhythm I stopped, drew my knife, rapped a column with the haft. The hum slid down and died. Teeth clenched, I exhaled and continued, striking a new column every twenty steps; the music kept trying to restart, a saw that meant to cut consciousness.
Leaving the forest, light seemed to brighten behind me. I didn't glance back. The terrain slanted gently upward to a promontory I felt compelled to climb, as though the Voice could be heard there without filters. It was hard going: every metre cracked underfoot, each one different, like stepping on fractured glass. At the summit the air twisted—hot for a heartbeat, then ice. Vertigo flashed. At the centre stood a tilted black monolith, polished like the fang of some beast outlawed in Pyramid catalogues.
I raised my lantern, letting the beam slide across the gloss. A wavering brightness appeared, shaped itself into a handprint: fingers too long, palm too narrow to be mine. I shifted the light; the outline remained, shrank, vanished. Gloved, I brushed the cold stone—nothing. A dark droplet slid from the tip, travelling straight to my wrist, then halted. A pinpoint chill stung as it touched; I jerked away, it hit the soil and left a burn mark. The jade thrummed faster, signalling a path. A degree left—pulse wild; a degree right—calm. I followed, reading the stone's rhythm: no tracks, no stars—only mineral heartbeat seducing flesh into motion.
The land dipped toward a hollow where the ground felt unnervingly soft, soon turning to a carpet of near-invisible filaments. Each strand vibrated at my touch; dry disgust rose—nerves without flesh. I crossed slowly, avoiding heavy steps. Light tension: strand contracted, relaxed. I sensed if I ran they'd root me, if I leaped they'd clasp my ankles. I did neither. Reaching the far edge, the jade beat low and approving: *Good step, Jareth.*
At a slope's foot I found a crack, a natural basalt corridor. Uphill I brushed smooth walls; my breath came back multiplied, a ghost mimicking my lungs. Half-way, shadows ahead refused to match my movements—extras, not cast by me. My lamp blinked off, on; the dancers stayed. I walked through them, a blade-cold chill passing my chest as though something slid between me and the rock by a hair's breadth. I forbade questions; obedience to self was brief relief.
Above waited a bare plateau, stone and sulfurous wind. I dimmed the lamp—I wouldn't paint myself white. The jade fell silent. Mineral hush isn't calm; it's warning. When jade quiets, they said, something nearer beats louder.
The ground trembled—no quake, but breathing. Vapour exhaled, sweet-scented. Tapping forward with my staff, I struck rock: it thrummed like a violin string far too long. A distant boom answered, twice. The terrain drank resonance, bad omen: the whole plateau was an echo chamber.
I tied the jade to the staff's cord; if I had to discard it I could. Walking faster, a glow kindled to my right; I ignored it. The flare rose and faded, green fire behind unseen hills. *Stay your line,* I muttered. My body obeyed.
Mid-plateau stood a twin marker: two slabs leaning together, forming a sharp arch. Between them a triangular hollow of perfect shade. I circled it—too perfect a refuge is a snare. Inside the angle, letters or their ghosts were etched, slimed over. Four symbols almost childish—identical to those inside the jade. *Same game,* I thought. If Pyramid scientists opened portals with such stones, no wonder Night comes to collect debts.
As I retied the pendant, something shifted behind the slabs—volume, not shadow. Pressure swelled, air shoved by mass. I braced—nothing lunged. The crack exhaled a wet smell: the memory of old algae. I turned my back.
The plateau sloped northeast. Wind now carried unmistakable salt: the sea. I advanced, limbs taut. Every hundred paces a new gust came up, iodine-laden, and made me feel near a limit. Fatigue scratched my nape—the worst place, where doubt becomes vertigo. I murmured names, yours and mine, knowing a repeated name is rope. Then the Voice: three syllables whispered in the mist, *"he…re…"*
I answered softer than echo: "Estoy." No shouts, no prayers. One word suffices when all else rots. Wind fell silent. I heard my skull's pulse. Far below something echoed the word inverted: "i am…* Night tests usurping small sounds; I did not play. I went on.
The slope steepened, slick rock. Cresting it, the sky tore: to my right the huge curve of an orb—or its persistent illusion—glared. No head-turn needed; its strange light grazed the ground. My shadow stretched off the cliff, endless. Shadow without foot is shadow without owner. I considered dropping the jade as an offering. Loosened, it flickered green inside, as if the glow would die in my chest, not in the stone. I knotted it fast; the faint pulse returned. *If the stone uses me, I use it back. Every madman needs his amulet.*
Descending against the sky I first heard surf—not gentle, but roaring in irregular blows, as if against hollow cliffs. Coastal ruins echo: one hears voices, thinks people, finds caves striving to speak. Still, the water's rhythm matched yours when you recited forbidden verses in sleep back in the Pyramid. Perhaps the sea is that murmur made literal—the first portal opened and the last.
I peered over the edge: nothing but fog and brine-splashed dark. Enough to know the sea was there; closer would cost more flesh. Skirting the upper curve, footing grew slick clay. Slow rhythm: step, staff, step, staff. Wind spiralled up, cold gases. The earlier metallic drone returned, deeper, wedded to breath: an organ of bronze buried in the coast, seeking a frequency in my bones. I pressed the jade to my chest, muffling it, denying the harmony.
The hum lasted ten beats, then ceased. Sea fell quiet. When I lowered my hand, the jade ticked again, warmer. I accepted it as lucid breath. The journey could not pause.
Leaning against the cliff-wall, I edged onward. The rock radiated residual heat—impossible in this cold night—warmth from within, not sun. Perhaps a magma artery, reminding me earth's blood could mimic stone's heartbeat. Touching the jade: steady, not hot. *You and I still know the difference,* I muttered. My shadow crouched on the ground as if listening.
Another mesa. On it a still pond, black as tar. The sky's reflection was pure absence, broken only by occasional ripples I failed to source. I knelt. The pond's skin mirrored nothing; then a shape formed—misty, white, fog condensing into a raised human hand. Five correct fingers, yet a perfect circular hole burned in the palm. When the hand rose a centimetre I backed away; it sank and the pool stilled.
No second warning needed. I ran till my legs threatened to buckle—into a natural stone amphitheatre riddled with narrow cracks. Between two crevices sprouted dry blades of grass. Vegetal. I crushed one: dust, not life—yet it was grass. If grass endures, I thought, a stubborn name can sprout too.
As if the amphitheatre were built for it, resonance flooded the air—spilling over the rim, focusing until dead plants quivered. A voice, yet not human. Voices, an insect swarm: forgotten tongues from buried libraries. Clear among them, inescapable, my name. *Jareth.* Second pass, yours. *Naani.* Night parrots learned names, heedless of intent. I shouted myself hoarse. No reply; the drone persisted. I clamped my ears, but the names seeped through pores and pulse. On the verge of one endless scream, the jade hammered suddenly and the swarm broke off, leaving only the deep hum, identical to the column-forest, the sea organ, the plateau…
The stone grew hot. I dropped it; it clanged, and the lingering vibration stilled. When I dared pick it up, its pulse was fading like an exhausted muscle. I retied it and sat. The surviving silence felt like grace.
Sleep tempted—I quivered—but mustn't. I breathed and ordered thoughts so the mist wouldn't absorb me. First, the moon: threat overhead—ignore. Second, the stone: compass still valid. Third, the coast: sign of closeness to what the Voice seeks. Fourth, the portals: Night copies names, so it will mimic doors; I must tell reflections from real thresholds.
Rising, knees buckled then obeyed. The sky stayed dark—perhaps a hundred heartbeats before some alien flare pushes again.
I will walk. Farther than fear weighs, beyond this amphitheatre, beyond the mirror-water and the fleshless hands. At the end perhaps one name, spoken by a true voice—not an echo—will quench the thirst. If not, the ruins will bear witness. The jade beats, slow, firm—worth more than any crippled compass.
I move. Night continues; so do I. As long as my eyes stay lowered and stone and dead grass keep a hint of pulse, madness walks behind me, not within. We'll see which tires first.