The last tree line ended the way lies ended, not with a clean stop, but with a thinning.
One trunk became two. Two became scattered poles of bark. Shadows broke apart into open space. The air dried out so fast it felt like somebody had wringing it out right in front of my face. My boots left the packed forest floor and sank into loose sand, and the first step almost stole my balance.
I hated how quiet the desert was. The forest had been terrifying, but it had rules. Noise had places to hide. Leaves, bark, roots, all of it could swallow sound and give it back in pieces. The desert did not swallow anything. It kept everything. Every footstep. Every breath. Every tremble in my voice.
I stopped just past the last roots and looked back at the trees.
The Centilito slid to the edge and froze, claws sunk into the last strip of soil like it was holding onto home. Its plates shifted in slow, irritated ripples. Its head moved left, then right, tasting the air. It did not come out immediately. It tested the sand with one foreleg, pressed, felt it give, then pulled back like the ground had bitten it.
So you did have fear, I thought. Not fear like mine, not panic. Something older. Something in-built. A line it did not like crossing.
My lungs burned as I tried to pull air without wincing. Every breath scraped my ribs. Sweat cooled on my skin and turned clammy under the night wind. My shoulder throbbed where the vine had nearly ripped it out. My side still felt raw where acid had kissed it earlier, like someone had rubbed pepper and salt into my skin and then told me to run.
I took another step backward, deeper into the sand, and forced myself to smile, even if it came out more like a grimace.
"Big bad forest king," I called, my voice cracking. "Fraid of some sand?"
The Centilito answered with a hiss that sounded like grinding stone. Its spiraled mouth opened slightly, then closed. It lifted itself higher, plates clacking in a slow rhythm, and for a moment it looked like it was about to turn away.
If it turned away, I did not know what I would do. I would have won nothing. I would have dragged it to the border and watched it retreat back into the trees, and I would still have to walk back to the village with the same problem alive behind me.
I swallowed and stepped farther into the open.
The sand shifted under my weight and sighed, a soft sliding sound that made my nerves stand at attention. I had been here already. I had felt what lived under this. The desert worms were not stories. They were hunger made into motion. They were the kind of monster that did not chase you for sport. They simply rose, and if you were in the wrong place, you ended.
I needed that.
The thought made me sick, but it was true. I needed another monster to solve the first one. I needed a bigger danger to swallow the danger behind me.
I raised my arms wide, like I was daring the Centilito to make me pay for talking.
"Come," I said, quieter now, more to myself than to it. "Come, man. Step ina the wrong yard."
The Centilito's body tightened.
I saw it in the way the segments pulled close, the way its legs dug in, the way the plates along its underside flexed like it was bracing for impact. For a heartbeat, it still did not move. It stayed at the border with its front half hovering over sand, its back half anchored in soil.
Then the flicker happened.
The runes along its underside flashed faintly, not like fire, more like a signal passing through a wire. The glow jumped in a stuttering pattern that did not look natural. It paused where it should not pause, then skipped where it should have paused. It was like watching a traffic light glitch from red to green without warning.
The Centilito jerked forward.
Not smoothly. Not with that cold, controlled glide it had used in the forest.
It came into the sand like something had been pushed.
Its first steps sank deep. Sand swallowed its claws halfway up the leg joints, and the creature lurched, correcting its balance with a harsh scrape of plates. For a second I thought it might stop, frustrated by the ground. Then it shoved again, brute force replacing precision. Its legs hammered downward, punching holes, dragging its long body forward in heavy pulls.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The sound rolled across the dunes.
Not the soft click of the forest chase. Not the hush and whisper. This was weight. This was a battering ram announcing itself.
My heart stuttered.
Good, I told myself. Loud is good.
I backed away fast, and the sand tried to steal me with every step. It clung to my boots like hands. It slid under my heel and forced my ankles to work too hard. The desert punished movement. It wanted you to be slow. It wanted you to trip.
Behind me, the Centilito kept coming, each step throwing up fans of sand like spray from a wave. Its legs fought the ground, and in that fight it made even more noise.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
I felt the tremor under my feet, not just from its weight, but from how the desert carried vibration. In the forest, the earth had been packed. Here, the sand turned every impact into a pulse, a message sent down into the dark below.
I did not have to look behind me to know the Centilito was committed now. I could hear it, and more than that, I could feel it. The air itself seemed to shudder every time its plates slapped and scraped.
I forced my breathing to steady.
If you panic, you die.
The desert did not care if I was brave. It did not care if I was clever. It cared about one thing.
Where I stood when it rose.
I kept moving, but not straight. Straight would put me too close to the worm's tail if it appeared ahead. Straight would also make me predictable. I curved my path, wide arcs, like I was drawing a circle in the sand. I needed the Centilito between me and whatever was beneath. I needed it to be the loudest thing out here, the heaviest thing, the tastiest thing.
My thoughts kept trying to jump forward.
What if the worms do not come?
What if they come and choose me anyway?
What if they come and the Centilito kills me first?
I shoved the questions away and focused on what I could control.
Noise. Distance. Timing.
The desert was not empty. It pretended to be, but it was full of small movements if you looked carefully. A pale scorpion skittered over a patch of sand near a half-buried rock, its tail curled like a hook, its legs quick and precise. It froze when it felt the vibration, then vanished under the sand so fast it looked like it dissolved.
A bird, long-legged and ugly in the moonlight, lifted its head from behind a dune. It had been pecking at something dead. Its eyes caught the movement of my body and it stood still, deciding. Then the Centilito's next boom shook the ground and the bird exploded into flight, wings beating hard, trailing sand like dust off a rug.
Even the small creatures understood.
Get away from the sound. Get away from the heavy thing.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. My throat tightened instead.
"Yeah," I whispered, stumbling as the sand grabbed my foot. "Run. Everybody run."
Because I could not run forever.
The Centilito gained on me, not because it was faster on sand, but because it did not tire the way I did. It had mass. It had endurance. It had claws built for tearing into ground. Even if the terrain slowed it, it kept moving like it had all night to spend.
Its hiss rose and fell with effort, a grinding breath. Acid dripped from its mouth in thin threads that hissed when they hit the sand, melting little pits that steamed for a second before collapsing back in.
I glanced back once, just once.
The Centilito was a moving wall under the moons. Yellow plates, dirt-streaked now, flexing with each segment. Legs stabbing the sand in uneven rhythm, pulling, dragging, correcting. Its spiraled mouth opened wider as it pushed forward, and the black inside of it looked bottomless.
It was out of the forest.
It was in my world now.
And it hated it.
That was the only advantage I had.
I looked ahead and scanned the dunes.
At first I saw nothing but sand and moonlight. Then my eyes caught the faintest pulse, far out, barely visible.
A soft yellowish glow.
Like a lantern buried under the ground.
The worm's tail.
My stomach flipped.
"Good," I breathed. "You hearin all a this noise, eeh?"
The glow dipped, then rose again, as if something massive below had turned its body.
The Centilito boomed behind me, and the glow pulsed brighter for half a second.
I shifted my path again, curving so the Centilito would pass closer to the glow than I would. My legs shook with fatigue. My ribs screamed every time my foot sank and I had to drag it out. My throat tasted like metal and sand.
The air changed.
It always changed right before something rose.
The wind, which had been constant, seemed to hesitate. The soft hiss of loose grains sliding down dunes slowed. Even the Centilito's heavy movement sounded slightly muffled for one strange breath, like the desert was taking in air.
I knew that feeling from the first time I had nearly died out here.
I did not stop running, but my body wanted to. Every instinct screamed at me to freeze, to drop flat, to become small.
I forced myself forward instead, and I aimed my sprint so the Centilito would cross the invisible line first.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The glow vanished.
The sand ahead swelled.
Not a wave. Not a ripple.
A bulge.
Like the ground was inhaling.
"Here we go," I whispered, and my voice sounded small in the open air.
The dune erupted.
Sand blasted upward in a glowing spray, grains lit from beneath like sparks in a fire. Something rose through it in a smooth, terrible arc, not scrambling, not climbing, just pushing itself into the sky like it owned it.
The first desert worm.
Its body was thick, translucent in places, lit from within by pulsing lines that ran along its length like veins filled with molten gold. It looked almost beautiful for half a second, and then the mouth opened and beauty turned into a joke.
It was a circular maw that split wider than it should have, lined with rows of jagged teeth that shone wet. There was no roar. No warning. Just the mute horror of something that existed only to consume.
The Centilito tried to stop.
I saw it plant its legs, saw the sand betray it immediately. Its claws sank, its weight shifted, its plates ground with effort as it tried to brace.
Too late.
The worm slammed into it.
The impact sounded like a wall collapsing. It shook the dune under my feet so hard I stumbled and went down, my shoulder hitting sand, my mouth filling with grit. For a second I could not hear anything but ringing.
Then I looked up, and the fight was already happening.
The worm coiled around the Centilito in heavy bands, its glowing body looping tight. It moved with awful confidence, not fast in a frantic way, but fast in a certain way, like it knew exactly where to place itself. Each coil tightened and I heard plates creak. Not a clean crack. A slow bending sound, like metal stressed past its limit.
The Centilito shrieked.
The sound was higher than I expected, a whistling scream that made the hairs on my arms stand up. It thrashed, legs stabbing into sand, trying to anchor. Its claws dug grooves so deep they looked like trenches. It tried to pull free by force, but the worm cinched tighter and dragged it down, half burying both of them in sliding sand.
Acid sprayed.
The Centilito's spiraled mouth spat arcs of liquid that glowed faintly as they flew. The acid hit the worm's body and hissed, steam rising in sharp bursts. Spots on the worm's glowing skin dimmed where the acid landed, the internal light flickering as if the poison disrupted something inside. Blisters rose fast, swollen boils that ruptured and leaked bright fluid that steamed the moment it touched the sand.
The worm did not release.
It bit instead.
Its mouth clamped onto the Centilito's exoskeleton and ripped.
The sound made my stomach turn. It was not like teeth in flesh. It was like a tree being torn apart, fiber and shell and something wet underneath all separating at once. A plate came free in the worm's mouth, jagged at the edges, and the Centilito screamed again as exposed flesh met open air.
The Centilito fought like it was built for something else.
In the forest it had been control. Herding. Closing paths.
Here it was survival.
It stabbed its claws into the worm's body, not just scratching, but driving them deep like hooks. It twisted and tore, trying to open the worm's skin the way the worm had opened its armor. The worm's glow flickered where the claws sank in, and more bright fluid leaked, steaming on the sand.
For a moment, the Centilito seemed to gain leverage.
It thrashed and slammed its body sideways, trying to smash the worm against the dune hard enough to loosen the coils. Sand sprayed. The worm's glowing body buckled, and one coil loosened for half a heartbeat.
I felt a cold rush of fear.
No.
Not that.
If the Centilito won this, I was finished. I would not outrun it across the dunes a second time. I would not survive another night of that chase. I would not even make it back to the forest.
The worm tightened again, but I saw the change.
It was not effortless anymore.
It was work.
The worm's coils shifted, repositioning like it was thinking with its whole body. Its internal light pulsed brighter, then dimmer, like a heartbeat speeding up. The Centilito kept stabbing, kept scraping, kept pulling itself forward inch by inch through sand and blood and glowing fluid.
Then the worm did something that made the night feel even emptier.
It screamed.
Not a sound like an animal. Not a roar.
A long, vibrating call that rolled through the sand more than through the air. I felt it in my ribs. I felt it in my teeth. The dunes around us seemed to answer with soft collapses as the sound traveled, as if the desert itself shifted to listen.
My eyes widened.
It was calling.
Calling for help.
The Centilito thrashed harder, like it understood the danger of that call. It spat more acid, wild now, and some of it splashed onto the sand near me. The grains hissed and melted into dark pits. I scrambled backward on hands and heels, desperate not to get touched.
The worm's call went on, and then it stopped.
For one breath, everything held.
The Centilito and worm locked together like a knot, both moving, both grinding.
Then the sand to the side of them swelled.
A second bulge, farther out, larger.
The dune erupted again.
The second desert worm rose, its body glowing with the same inner fire, but its light pulsed faster, more aggressive, like it had come already hungry. It did not hesitate. It did not circle. It launched itself straight into the fight.
It bit into the Centilito's side.
Not the same spot the first worm was working on. Lower down. Near where the segments joined, where the plates overlapped.
The second worm's jaws sank through shell with brutal efficiency. It tore away armor like ripping wet bark, exposing flesh underneath, and the Centilito's scream changed into something raw and desperate.
Now it was two against one.
The Centilito tried to fight both, but it could only reach one at a time. Its claws stabbed wildly, catching the second worm once, twice, three times, leaving gouges that leaked glowing fluid. But every time it turned to strike at the second, the first worm tightened its coils and bit again, ripping more plates free.
The desert became a furnace of movement.
Sand avalanched down the sides of the dunes from the constant impacts. The worms' glowing bodies painted the night in shifting gold. The Centilito's yellow plates flashed dull under moonlight, then vanished under coils, then reappeared as it thrashed.
Acid flew again.
The Centilito spat in wide arcs, trying to hit both worms. Some of the acid landed on the first worm's coils and made them spasm, loosening briefly. Some landed on the second worm's side and dimmed a stretch of its glow.
But the worms were built for this terrain.
The sand helped them. It supported their weight. It let them vanish and reappear in fractions of a second. The Centilito, for all its size, looked clumsy here, its legs sinking, its body dragging, its movements slowed by ground that did not hold firm.
The first worm shifted upward toward the head.
The second worm tightened lower, squeezing the midsection.
I watched the Centilito's legs slow.
At first it was subtle. One leg missed its anchor and slipped. Then another. The stabbing rhythm became uneven. Its shrieks lost some strength, turning from furious to panicked.
The worms did not rush the end. They worked.
Bite. Tear. Coil. Tighten.
Again.
Plates fell away, tossed into sand. Some of them were still attached by strips of flesh that snapped under pressure. The sand around them darkened in wet patches that did not glow, blood soaking into the dunes like spilled paint.
The Centilito tried one last time to regain control.
It wrapped part of its body around the first worm and slammed downward, trying to crush it. The worm's glow flickered and its coils loosened, but the second worm immediately surged up and bit closer to the head, forcing the Centilito to twist away.
That twist exposed its neck area.
The first worm lunged.
It opened its mouth wider than it had any right to and clamped down on the Centilito's head. Teeth scraped shell. Then they found a seam, and the worm jerked.
The sound that followed was the worst sound I had heard in this world so far.
A wet crack.
A tearing snap.
The Centilito's head came free.
For half a second the body still moved, legs twitching like they did not understand the message had arrived. Then everything collapsed. Segments sank into sand. Claws went slack. The long armored body shuddered once, twice, and then it became just weight.
Dead.
The worms held the kill, coils still tight, mouths working at the exposed flesh as if the fight had never happened, as if the Centilito had always been food.
My throat tightened and I realized I had been holding my breath.
I exhaled slowly, and the air tasted like sand and acid and something metallic.
I wanted to celebrate.
My body refused.
All I felt was the sudden terrifying fact that the desert worms were still here.
And I was still alive.
I scrambled backward, staying low, using a half-buried rock ridge as cover. The sand under my palms was cold now, and it made my skin crawl. I kept my eyes on the worms, watching for any sign they had noticed me.
They did not look at me.
They did not care about me.
Not yet.
They were too busy tearing into their prize, glowing bodies wrapped around the Centilito like a funeral shroud.
I forced myself to move.
Slow at first. Then faster.
I turned and ran, not in a straight line. Never in a straight line. I ran like the desert was listening, like every step might be the one that called something else up from below.
My boots sank and dragged. My lungs burned. My ribs screamed. But fear had changed shape now. It was no longer the sharp fear of being hunted by the Centilito. It was the wide fear of being small in a place where huge things fed.
Behind me, the worms shifted and the sand trembled.
I did not look back again.
I ran until the sand underfoot started to give way to harder ground, until the texture changed and my steps sounded different, until the air grew slightly damp again and the wind carried the faint smell of leaves instead of dust.
The forest.
The first trees looked like salvation.
I crossed the border and felt my whole body sag with relief that was almost painful. The ground under the canopy held firm. Roots gave my boots something to grip. Shadows returned and broke up the open space. For the first time in what felt like hours, I did not feel exposed from every direction.
I slowed to a limping walk, and I listened.
At first, there was still that strange hush. Like the forest had been holding its breath through the fight, waiting to see if the Centilito would come back.
Then, gradually, life crept in again.
A small chirp, distant and cautious.
A rustle in a bush that sounded like something tiny moving, not something massive hunting.
Leaves whispering against each other as wind returned to normal.
The forest was not cheering. It was not celebrating.
It was exhaling.
I leaned a hand against a trunk and closed my eyes for one second. My skin was gritty with sand. My mouth tasted like blood. My shoulder felt wrong, like it was sitting in the socket at an angle it did not like. My side burned under my torn shirt.
But the Centilito was dead.
The thought did not feel heroic. It felt unreal. Like a story somebody else had survived.
I pushed off the trunk and kept moving.
The path back was not clean. It was marked by memory more than landmarks, but the forest had changed. The violence of the chase was gone. The broken branches and torn vines were still there, but they looked different without the threat right behind me. They looked like scars instead of warnings.
Bird tracks crossed the path now. Fresh. Small.
Something had already started moving again.
Every few steps I stopped and listened, expecting the wrong sound, expecting the click of too many legs, expecting the scrape of plates.
It never came.
As I went deeper, the air grew cooler. The dampness returned, clinging to my skin and turning the sand on my clothes into mud. It should have been uncomfortable. It was comforting. It meant I was leaving the desert behind.
And then, far ahead, I saw it.
A weak glow through the trees.
Torchlight.
The village wall.
My legs nearly gave out right there, not from fear, but from relief. My body had been running on something thin and stubborn, and now that the goal was real, that stubbornness started to drain.
I forced myself forward anyway.
Step. Drag. Step.
The forest opened into the familiar approach, and the wooden wall rose up, tall and rough, built from boards and trunks, patched in places, solid in others. Torches burned along it, their flames dancing in the night breeze.
I stopped just short of the light.
My hand shook as I touched the trunk beside me. I realized my fingers were swollen. Scraped. Dirty. Half numb. I looked down at myself.
Torn shirt. Stained pants. Sand in every fold of fabric. Cuts along my arms. My side mottled and angry where acid had burned it. My shoulder held stiff like it did not trust itself.
I did not look like any hero.
But I was here.
I lifted my head and stared at the wall.
Something inside me steadied, not pride exactly, but something close to it. A quiet weight.
I had walked into the forest because I had been told to.
I was walking back out because I had refused to die.
I stepped forward into the torchlight, toward the wall, and whatever waited on the other side.