The reddish glow that flickered on the horizon had danced before my eyes for hours—faint enough to pass for a mirage, stubborn enough to chain my steps to its shimmer. Since leaving the root-well, the sand had changed: the dunes were no longer loose grains but gray stone scales that crunched beneath my boots and rose and fell like the lungs of something colossal. I was walking across a plain that seemed to breathe me, and every exhalation ruffled the air with a harsh whisper, half wind, half groan.
*A living desert,* I thought, and the attempt to name it sent a chill down my spine. With every meter the plates overlapped and settled, leaving fissures that closed before I could peer inside. Only the red beacon remained fixed—an insolent point amid that mineral pulse that threatened to swallow the ground beneath my feet.
The jade began to beat out of time: one throb, then two, then an interval far too long. At first I blamed exhaustion; then I felt tension strangling my chest, as if an invisible fist had seized my sternum. I grabbed the pendant and felt its pulse—irregular, cold, viscous, a heartbeat not my own. I remembered Naani's workshop—her laugh woven with the coils' hum—and forced myself onward. Whenever the pain sharpened I whispered her name, and the air grew a little lighter, as though the mere thought of her pried a crack in Night's pressure.
I stepped onto a ridge and, descending the far side, heard a crunch that wasn't mine. I halted; the ground expanded into silence. Footsteps followed—clear, sure, one after another—coming from my left. I looked: nothing. No shadow, no figure, no fault in the rock. They advanced as if treading a second floor laid over mine. When they passed within arm's reach I caught the rustle of cloth against cloth and a murmur I couldn't decipher. Then the steps receded, leaving the air laced with a salty, ancient scent—wet iron mingled with wilted lilies. The jade pricked hard, as if it recognized that perfume.
I marched on. Each unseen step left a wake of backward words in my head, a drone that seemed to dive into my memories. I didn't know whether it came from those bodiless walkers or some remote corner of myself. I tried to ignore it, but when the ground breathed out its sulfurous reek again, the syllables arranged themselves into a name that bristled my skin: **Jareth**—voiced backward, *Theraj*, in a thick whisper. I pulled my collar tight, gulped air, and kept going.
The beacon proved its deceit at last. It was no tower or bonfire but a ring of obelisks. I counted eleven, each taller than three men, each cracked and scored with symbols my mind tried to recognize and instantly rejected. The stone emitted its reddish glow, yet no flame burned there, no mineral smoldered. Color clung to the surface, trembling without true light. I stopped at the outer rim and studied the faults running through every column: they opened and closed slowly, ripping and healing like breathing wounds. In the fourth crack I saw reflections—a flash of water, a silhouette beneath a tree, Naani's laughter flinging a luminous thread into the space between worlds. I stepped back; the image collapsed into a black fissure.
It reminded me of the convex mirrors in the Pyramid where we trained our minds against optical illusions, but this struck deeper. I thought of circling farther out—though there was no way around. The desert ended at a wall of rock so smooth it looked polished; beyond it loomed a sky that wasn't sky, only a different darkness. In that wall-less enclosure the obelisks stood like an unavoidable nomination. I felt that if I turned away, the jade would shatter—or the ground itself would shove me back—and the idea of giving my back to anything here squeezed me with a child's panic.
I entered the circle and leaned my head on the nearest monolith. The surface was warm—heat alien to the eternal night. I considered lighting a chem-lantern to jot observations but closed my eyes first. My legs ached; my ankles still vibrated with the subterrestrial pulse. I drifted into a half sleep, consciousness wandering the stone's seams.
Sleep found me upright. I felt sand underfoot, the column at my spine, yet the sand no longer held me. The Moon— that moon I always avoided—hung above the sky with a dirty, watery glow. It wasn't a disc; it was an eye. A viscous pupil dilated and constricted, searching. When its gaze fixed on me, the jade ripped hot across my chest. I tried to look away, but my body refused. I watched the lunar crust ripple open like an eyelid, letting down translucent columns that dropped like nerves. A voice—the one the Pyramid called "from the Pens"—whispered behind my ear: **link**. Promise and doom in a single word. The Moon shut, the pain ebbed, and I woke with sand stuck to my face.
The scarlet scaffold remained, but the obelisk I'd used for a pillow was bleeding—yes, bleeding. A dark sap, thicker than oil and flickering violet, seeped from its widest fissure. It crawled to the sand, weaving nervous lines. Not ordinary liquid; each strand moved as though it had will. I stood back, unwilling to touch. The lines gathered, sketching words that thought they were language. They weren't: **merid\_ — ru\_ — por\_ — silence**. Some blanks filled, others blinked, forever correcting themselves. A message scrawled by a dying hand.
Two truths struck me. First: nothing here was fixed; the landscape folded with each step, tailoring itself to my fears. Second: the ground itself meant to persuade—or mock—me by forging paths and signs. Maybe there was a method, or maybe it was madness and there was no exit, no goal, no Naani waiting. The jade pulsed, catching my doubt, reminding me the obelisks were a gate of sorts, one I had to pass.
I squeezed the pendant. Pain throbbed, but I recalled its origin—the day Naani set it in my palm, saying the shard came from a newly awakened layer, its frequency resonant with very old impulses, able to guide me if I listened instead of looked. Her smile, the metallic tang of the shop… and I knew where the stone had cracked: pressures here had opened an inner vein and let a melody leak that my ears couldn't hear. Perhaps the black sap was answering that call.
I approached the shifting script. My nearness made the letters flare, desperate to finish themselves. But the clearer they grew, the more I sensed the sentence would never be complete—some counterforce erased edges, mingling syllables that must not meet. I knew the feel: the same jolting resistance when my mind tried to decode the stone earlier— a clash between what could be understood and what must stay veiled.
I tried not to think of the lunar eye. *Don't look up,* I repeated, yet lifting my gaze from the sap I saw the sand curve around the circle. Beyond the obelisks new gullies spiraled, filled with that dark glow, carving a labyrinth with no center. The ground challenged me: *Decipher, if you can—or remain and let the air erase you.*
Retreat teased me: the notion tickled like ants at my nape. I realized I no longer remembered the breathing hills' contours. Any direction might lead me back here. Perhaps I was snared in a fold; perhaps the desert had shut like a trap around my stubbornness.
Two choices: surrender to confusion or wield it. I chose the latter. Releasing the jade, I let my chest set its own irregular cadence and began circling the ring. In the first fissure I again saw the tree scene, but now Naani's back was turned, and broken wings rained on her shoulders. In the next, a neon-lit corridor, a lab door, the shadow of someone tall holding something luminous. *Decoys,* I muttered—memories or inventions, no matter. Fear was real but logic steadied me: if the place attacked with visions, I could attack back with certainty not all were real.
After one full circuit I felt steadier. The second was different. The red glow began to throb with the jade—first in sync, then the stone raced ahead, then it lagged. Each misalignment twisted my gut. My pulse tried to match the faster beat. Nausea swelled; I halted, eyes shut. The desert spirit hissed, warm wind at my ear, metallic scent tinged now with burnt wires and abraded flesh. I opened my eyes to find the ink-labyrinth melting. Relief: the desert could not sustain every shape at once. There were cracks in its reality like the obelisks' own. If I found the right fissure I might…escape—or descend deeper to the pain's source.
I spoke aloud, partly to hear myself, partly to bruise the atmosphere:
"Jareth, everything here breathes. No stone is passive. Give it fear and it grows solid; give it silence and it splits. Don't make the world obey—make it doubt."
My voice held me. I pressed my fingers to the bleeding monolith. The cold sap tasted my skin; against instinct I stood still. It didn't hurt—only curious, a tingling. Eyes closed, I heard a new crackle, like dry bones rubbed together, humming a tune I recognized late: the song no machine could classify, the one Naani whistled unaware.
Drawing back, I saw no stain on my hand; instead a symbol glowed where I'd touched, warming from inside my pulse. I stepped away and felt the ground tilt, not violently—merely yielding, a slab slowly hinging downward. Sand parted into a gentle ramp, burrowing under the breathing layers.
I glimpsed the Moon's edge without lifting my head. Still whole, indifferent. Grateful not to meet its eye, I felt a mild buzz along my spine. The Moon doesn't change; the mind that visits it does. Mine urged downward, where Night's heart must beat beneath these stones.
Deep breath: salt on every inhale, copper on every exhale. The pendant's ache set a rhythm—beat, beat, pause, summons. I didn't answer aloud. Raising a hand toward the sky-line where the Moon hovered half-seen, I clenched it—just to feel skin, blood, proof of life. Then I took the first step onto the dark slope. The red light, once steady, flickered as if to say there was no straight path: linearity was a lie, the way would curve with every heartbeat and follow only while I accepted it.
I cared not what waited beneath the sand. Ignorance might steal reason, but it also preserved will. Down one tread, then another, ducking beneath a monstrous stone lintel forming around me. When the last slice of sky was gone I released the word that mattered most. I don't know if the wall heard it, if the hidden moon etched it in its ledger of shadows, if the trackless walkers paused. I know the jade struck my chest with a new cadence—slower, almost human. It did not heal, but it guided.
And so, with blood beating to a rhythm not entirely mine, I descended toward the unknown heartbeat waiting in Night's entrails, driven by the certainty—or the madness—that at the end of that pulse someone still remembered my name.