---
The wind changed that morning.
It didn't howl like it usually did across the Veiled Expanse — instead, it sang, in a tongue so old even Maari knelt to listen.
Siyara stood barefoot on the edge of a white dune, staring into the horizon that bent like melting glass.
> "Something's calling," she said softly.
> "Not something," Maari corrected. "Someone."
Behind them, the pilgrims had begun to chant.
They were all survivors of different cities — exiles, children, outcasts — but today, they moved in unison, eyes wide with reverence. Every one of them had seen her in their dreams.
And the desert remembered her name.
Even if she did not.
---
Later that day, the High Seer of Shalara arrived.
Blind in one eye and robed in sun-charred silk, she approached Siyara not as a stranger — but as if she were a long-lost daughter.
> "You wear the mark," the Seer said. "And the desert has whispered you back to us."
> "Do you know who I was?" Siyara asked.
> "I know what you were," the Seer replied. "And the name you were forbidden to speak."
> "Tell me."
The Seer's smile faded.
> "If I do… the earth may split, and the curse may stir. You must speak it yourself. When you are ready."
> "Then how do I find it?"
The Seer reached into her cloak and drew out a bowl carved of dragonbone, filled with silver sand.
> "By walking into the memory of your own death."
---
That night, Siyara sat cross-legged before the fire as the silver sand was poured over her palms.
The flames dimmed.
Voices echoed.
And she fell—
---
—into the past.
A battlefield of stars.
A crown of chains.
A voice shouting her name — not Siyara — but something ancient, thunderous, sacred.
> "Aurelya!" it cried.
"Don't do this — I will follow you through every hell—"
A sword plunged through her chest.
Gold and fire spilled from her mouth.
She reached for him — the prince whose hands trembled, whose soul shattered as he killed her.
> "We made an oath…" she gasped.
And then it all vanished.
---
Siyara jolted awake, drenched in sweat. Maari gripped her shoulders, terrified.
> "What did you see?"
Siyara didn't answer.
But she looked down at her palm — and for the first time, she could read the name burned into her skin:
> Aurelya.
---
And far away, Rhaelor stumbled in his sleep.
He whispered the same name through his teeth.
> "Aurelya…"
And when he woke, the mark on his chest burned gold — shaped like a phoenix crest.
---
End of Chapter 12: The Desert Knows Her Name