The city was not normal, even if it looked like it.
Its name didn't matter. People who lived there never truly left… and those who did, never came back the same.
From the top of an old rooftop, Kael Draven stood alone, watching the city that had never felt like home. Dim lights slipped through narrow streets. Distant voices echoed as if they belonged to another world. Everything seemed ordinary…
Except the weight inside his chest. A feeling that had followed him for months.
The feeling of being watched, not by people. But by something else.
A cold breeze crossed the night, unnatural for the heat that usually filled the air. Kael tightened his coat slightly, his eyes drifting toward the horizon, where the city slowly disappeared into sand.
The desert, it was never just a desert, it felt like a door.
A door to something older… something waiting.
"You're doing it again." Her voice was soft behind him.
Lyanna, the only one who understood his silence.
She stepped closer, carefully, as if afraid to disturb the air itself. She stood beside him, looking at the same distant line where the world seemed to end.
"You look at it like it's calling you."
Kael didn't answer, because it was.
"Kael…" she whispered, "something is changing in you."
He turned to her for a moment, everything else disappeared.
But her eyes… They weren't the same, there was fear in them and behind that fear… something else. Something like goodbye.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
She hesitated, then said quietly: "I'm afraid that if you leave this time… you won't come back."
The wind rose suddenly, not natural, not normal.
In the distance, something moved, a shape, not human, not animal.
Watching and waiting and for the first time, Kael understood something clearly:
The city was never his prison.
It was protecting him.
From what was waiting beyond it in the desert.