The transition wasn't a fade to black. It was a glitch.
One second, the barrel of a gun was a freezing circle against her skin, and the next—nothing. Just a flash of white so bright it felt like a physical punch to her brain.
She didn't wake up slowly. She bolted. Or she tried to.
Her body gave a violent, convulsive heave, her lungs searching for air that wasn't there. She gagged, her throat seizing up as she inhaled something fine and gritty. She started coughing—hard, racking sobs that made her head feel like it was going to split open right where the bullet had hit.
I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm dead.
The thought looped in her mind like a broken record. She was terrified to move her hands. If she moved them, she'd feel the wet, mushy gap in her skull. She'd feel the ruin of her own face. Her eyes were squeezed shut, tears leaking out, but they weren't cold tears—they felt like boiling oil on her cheeks.
"Please," she choked out, her voice a pathetic, wet rasp. "Please, don't."
She waited for the next shot. She waited for the "figure" to laugh or say something else in Russian. But all she heard was a low, oppressive hum—the sound of heat.
It was too hot. It was insanely hot.
Her heart was hammering against her ribs so hard it hurt, but as the seconds passed and no fourth shot came, she finally, tentatively, moved her right hand. She didn't reach for her head. She reached for the ground.
Her fingers closed around handfuls of hot, dry sand.
Her eyes snapped open. The light was an assault. It was so bright it made her feel nauseous. She squinted through the blur, her breath coming in short, panicked whistles.
"What?" she hissed, the word catching in her parched throat.
She looked down at herself. She was still wearing the heavy white winter coat. She was still in her thermal leggings. The fur of her ushanka was matted with sweat, and her skin felt like it was starting to cook inside her own clothes.
She scrambled backward, her boots kicking up spray of sand, her eyes darting everywhere. There were no trees. No barn. No snow. Just a horizon that vibrated with heat.
She finally worked up the courage. She slammed her hand against her temple. Then her other temple. She felt her forehead, her hair, her neck.
Smooth. Dry. No blood.
"No," she whispered, her heart rate spiking even higher. "No, no, no."
She didn't feel relieved. She felt insane. She had felt the impact. She had heard the sound. You don't just "not die" from that. She began to hyperventilate, the thick wool of her coat making it impossible to get a full breath. She felt like she was being buried alive in a furnace.
She clawed at the buttons of her coat, her fingers shaking so much she could barely grip them. She needed to get it off. She needed to see her body. She needed to know if she was a ghost or if this was some sick, fever-dream version of the afterlife.
"Help!" she screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the emptiness. "Is anyone—"
She stopped, her breath catching. She looked at her hands. They were the same hands. The dry Blood from the rusty Lock still there. But the air... the air smelled like salt and scorched earth.
She wasn't in Russia. She wasn't anywhere she knew. She was a fifteen-year-old girl dressed for a blizzard in the middle of a wasteland, and the realization was more terrifying than the gun had been. At least the gun made sense.
This? This was a nightmare she couldn't wake up from.
She stripped off the heavy coat, her movements frantic and clumsy. It fell into the sand with a muffled thud, the white wool looking like a dead swan against the gold.
She stood there in her thin thermal shirt, her chest heaving. The air didn't move. It didn't even feel like air; it felt like a heavy, invisible liquid she was forced to swallow.
Mama.
The thought hit her like a physical blow to the stomach. Her mother would be in the kitchen right now. She'd be checking the clock, wondering why the trip to the corner store was taking so long. She'd be scolding Alisa's little sister for picking at the dinner before it was ready.
A sharp, jagged sob caught in her throat. Her sister. She could almost feel the sticky grip of her sister's hand on her sleeve, the way the girl always trailed behind her like a shadow.
I didn't say goodbye.
The realization was a different kind of death. If she was here, in this impossible place, then she had simply vanished from theirs. A daughter who never came back with the milk. A sister who became a ghost in an afternoon.
She dropped to her knees, her hands shaking so violently she had to bury them in the sand to make them stop. The heat was relentless, but the cold fear was deeper. She reached into her collar and pulled out the silver pendant, the only thing that hadn't changed.
She stared at the polished surface of the silver. In the reflection, she saw a smudge of a face—pale skin, wide eyes, a dusting of freckles across a nose that was currently red from the sun.
"Alisa," she breathed.
The sound of her own name was so small it was almost pathetic. She didn't shout it. She whispered it against the metal, a desperate attempt to prove she was still the person who had lived in that apartment, who had a favorite book, who hated the smell of cabbage.
"My name is Alisa," she whispered again, her voice cracking.
She needed to hear the syllables. If she didn't say them, they might dissolve. If she didn't say them, she might become part of this sand—just another grain of something that didn't have a history.
She forced herself to look up.
The world was vibrating. The horizon was no longer a straight line; it was beginning to warp, the heat haze turning into something more solid. And then she saw it—something that didn't belong in a desert.
A door.
It wasn't attached to a house. It wasn't leaning against a wall. It was just a door, standing perfectly upright in the middle of a dune about fifty meters away. It was heavy, dark wood, the kind of door you'd see on an old cathedral or a government building in a city.
Alisa stared at it, her breath hitching. It was so out of place that it was almost comical.
"I'm hallucinating," she told herself, her fingers digging into the sand. "This is just the brain dying. Hypoxia. Heatstroke. This isn't real."
But as she watched, the door creaked.
The sound was sharp and loud, cutting through the heavy silence like a knife. It swung open just a few inches. And from the darkness within the crack, a smell drifted out across the burning dunes.
It wasn't the smell of salt or sun.
It was the smell of old hay. Of dust. And the metallic, sharp tang of spent gunpowder.
Alisa's heart stopped. Her hand flew to her temple, the phantom pain of the bullet throbbing in time with the creaking of the wood. The barn was in there. Her death was in there.
She scrambled backward on her hands and knees, terror overriding the heat. She didn't want to go back. She didn't want to be in the dark again. But as she moved, the sand beneath her feet shifted. It didn't just slide; it began to spiral, drawing her toward the door like a drain.
"No!" she screamed, her voice finally breaking. "No, please!"
Then, a voice came from the crack in the door. It wasn't the killer. It was a girl's voice—light, airy, and chillingly familiar.
"Alisa? Is that you? Mama says dinner is getting cold."
Alisa didn't just hear the door; she felt it in the marrow of her bones. It was a gravitational pull, a weeping wound in the air that smelled of the barn, of spent lead, and of the sour milk she had never delivered.
"Alisa?" the voice from the darkness cooed. It was her sister's voice, but it was peeling at the edges, revealing a hollow, metallic rasp beneath. "Mama says you're being selfish. Come in. It's cold."
"Stop," Alisa choked out. She was hyperventilating, her vision splintering into jagged shards of gold and black. "Please, stop."
She was a girl caught in the gears of an impossible machine. She began to claw at the sand, her fingernails filling with the iridescent grit, trying to bury her head, to disappear into the earth before the door opened wide enough to show her what lay behind the voice.
Then, the world went cold.
It wasn't the biting frost of Russia. It was a vacuum—a sudden, absolute absence of heat that made the sweat on her neck turn to ice. A hand, small and weightless as a falling petal, settled on her shoulder.
Alisa's heart didn't just skip; it stopped. The silence that followed was so profound she could hear the sliding of her own cells.
"The Eima is a clumsy predator," a voice murmured.
It was a voice that didn't sound like it was moving through air. It sounded like it was being thought directly into the center of Alisa's skull. It was musical, terrifyingly clear, and carried the weight of a billion years.
Alisa wrenched herself around, her boots skidding in the liquid sand. She expected a ghost. She expected the man with the gun.
Instead, she saw a miracle of light and shadow.
The girl stood barely four feet tall, a small silhouette against the oppressive sun. But she was not of this desert. Her skin was the color of unpolished marble, and her hair—a waterfall of paper-white strands—didn't fall so much as it drifted, each hair a filament of silk that seemed to glow with its own internal logic. Her eyes were not eyes at all, but windows into a deep, violet nebula, shimmering with the birth of stars.
"Who... what are you?" Alisa's voice was a jagged ruin. She scrambled back, her palms burning on the sand that the girl's presence hadn't yet cooled.
The child didn't blink. She watched the wooden door with a clinical, detached pity, as if observing a mold growing on a piece of fruit.
"Just a Friend my dear Visitor," the girl said. She took a step forward. The sand beneath her feet didn't shift; it stilled, the grains freezing into a perfect, glassy plane to accommodate her weight. "And that door is a 'Lure.' It is the desert's way of recycling your trauma. It wants to drink the memory of your mother's kitchen until there is nothing left of Alisa Mikhailova but a dry husk."
Alisa flinched at her own name. It felt like a physical strike. "How do you know my name? I haven't... I haven't told anyone."
"I know the geometry of your ending, Alisa," the girl replied. Her tone was devoid of malice, yet it lacked the warmth of a human child. "I know the three leaden seeds planted in your flesh back in the dark. I know the way your soul vibrated when it realized it no longer had a home to return to."
Alisa stared at the paper-white hair, her mind struggling to categorize the being before her. "You're a hallucination. My brain is dying... it's just making a story to keep me from screaming."
The girl reached out. Her hand was small, the fingers long and elegant, the skin so perfect it looked like it had never known a day of sun or wind.
"A hallucination would tell you what you want to hear," the girl said softly. "It would tell you that the door leads back to Moscow. I am telling you that Moscow is a ghost, and you are the shadow it left behind. My name is Iris. Or, at least, that is the vibration this reality uses to identify me."
Alisa looked at the hand. It was an invitation to go deeper into the nightmare, or perhaps, the only way out of it.
"Iris," Alisa whispered, the name feeling like a heavy stone in her mouth. "You're... you're a child. Why are you here?"
"I am not a child, Alisa. I am merely wearing a shape you can look at without losing your mind," Iris said. A flicker of something resembling kindness—or perhaps just curiosity—crossed those cosmic eyes. "The Eima is hungry. It has already tasted your grief. Soon, it will stop showing you doors, and it will start showing you its teeth. Will you stay here and be consumed by your own memories? Or will you walk?"
Alisa looked back at the door. Her sister's voice was changing now, turning into a rhythmic, wet clicking sound. The "Lure" was failing. The illusion was rotting.
She looked back at the small, radiant girl with the white hair. Alisa's hand trembled as she reached out, her fingers inches away from that impossible, cold skin.
"If I go with you," Alisa asked, "will I still be me?"
Iris smiled, a small, devastatingly beautiful expression that felt like a death and a rebirth all at once. "You will be a law unto yourself, Alisa. Eventually."
Alisa's fingers hovered a breath away from the girl's hand.
Behind her, the door creaked wider.
The air spilling from the crack wasn't just hot—it was wrong. Hay and dust curdled into something metallic, then sweet in a way that turned her stomach. Like rot pretending to be comfort. Like a kitchen memory left out too long, sour at the edges.
And then the sand beneath her knees moved.
Not sliding. Not settling.
Gripping.
It tightened around her ankle like a hand closing. Her boot sank, and the sand rose with it, twisting into pale cords that wrapped her leg and yanked so hard her whole body snapped backward. Pain shot up her shin. Her palms scraped raw as she tried to dig in, nails tearing, heat burning through skin.
She screamed.
The pull didn't feel like it was only on her body—something inside her lurched too, like fingers hooking into the soft parts of her thoughts and tugging.
Her mother's face—there, then smearing like wet ink.
Her sister's voice—warping, hollowing, turning into something that clicked beneath the words.
Alisa's throat closed. Panic flooded her so violently she couldn't pull air right. She clutched the pendant with her free hand, squeezing until the half-moon bit into her palm.
Silver. Cold. Real.
"No— NO—!" she choked, voice breaking apart.
The door widened another inch.
The darkness inside it stopped looking like shadow and started looking like a mouth. Something in that crack clicked, like teeth testing each other.
Alisa gagged. Her vision flashed white at the edges. She tried to crawl, but the sand-cords yanked again and her spine jolted with pain as she slammed back.
And then the girl moved.
Not like someone arriving with thunder. Not like a savior in a story.
She just stepped closer, like she was stepping around a puddle.
She reached down and wrapped her small hand around Alisa's wrist.
The pull stopped so abruptly Alisa's whole body jerked forward, as if the force had been cut clean. The sand-cords trembled, tightened once—desperate—
And the door was gone.
Not shattered. Not burned. Not swallowed.
Gone like it had never existed.
The cords collapsed into normal sand. The stench vanished. The pressure in the air released so suddenly Alisa sucked in a breath that hurt her ribs.
The desert was just desert again—heat, silence, an empty horizon vibrating with light.
Alisa coughed hard and then broke, shaking, into sobs she couldn't stop. Her eyes snapped to where the door had stood, blinking fast like she could force it back into existence just to prove she wasn't insane.
Nothing.
No mark. No dent in the dune. No shadow where it had been.
"What… what the hell—" she rasped. "It grabbed me— it—"
The girl looked at her, unbothered, like she was listening to someone describe a nightmare after waking.
Alisa swallowed, throat raw. She forced the words out anyway, because she needed them out.
"You said… you said 'Eima' before." Her voice wobbled. "You called it that. The door— that thing— was that the Eima?"
For the first time the girl's eyes shifted from the empty dunes to Alisa's face. Not cold. Not cruel. Just… present.
"Yes," she said simply. "That was the Eima."
Alisa's stomach twisted. "What is it?"
The girl's shoulders lifted in a small shrug. "A predator."
"That's not—" Alisa's breath hitched. "That's not an answer."
"It is," the girl replied, still calm. "It lures. It repeats. It tries on voices until it finds one you can't ignore."
Alisa's nails dug into her own palm. "It used my sister's voice."
A tiny pause. Just enough to feel like the girl heard the hurt, not only the information.
"It does that," she said quietly.
Alisa stared at the spot where the door had been. Her head throbbed with leftover terror, like her body hadn't caught up to the fact that it was still alive. Her heart was still hammering so hard it made her ribs ache.
"You… you did something," Alisa whispered, voice small now. "You made it disappear."
The girl blinked once. "It's gone."
"That's—" Alisa swallowed hard. "How?"
The girl's mouth tilted, almost like she might be tired.
"I don't know what you mean," she said.
Alisa stared at her, disbelief mixing with helplessness until she wanted to scream. "You— you literally— it was there and then it wasn't!"
The girl's expression didn't change. "It never was"
Alisa's breath came too fast. The sun felt like it was pressing down on the back of her neck. Sweat rolled under her ushanka and along her spine, trapped under winter layers until she felt like she was suffocating in her own clothes.
She looked down and saw her coat—heavy, white—lying crumpled where she'd thrown it earlier. Seeing it there hit her in the chest like a punch. It looked like evidence of another world, dropped into the wrong one.
Her hands were bare.
For half a second her brain tried to "fix" it by imagining the soft weight of mittens—
Then the memory snapped sharp: taking them off. The rusty lock. The bite of metal. The barn. The ladder.
They were gone. Back there. Where she died.
Her throat tightened. She swallowed down the rising sickness and forced her body to move anyway. She crawled to the coat, fingers trembling, grabbed it by the collar, and shook sand loose. The fabric was already warm from the sun.
She hugged it to her chest for a second—not to put it on, but because she needed to hold something that still belonged to her.
The pendant swung and tapped faintly against her knuckles.
"Where are we?" she managed, voice scraping out of her.
The girl glanced out over the dunes as if checking a direction.
"This is the Sablewaste," she said. "A desert that eats directions and everything alive. You can walk straight for a day and end up behind yourself."
Alisa stared at the shimmering horizon. The name sounded real enough to be terrifying.
The girl didn't look at her when she added, quieter, "It's… his territory."
Alisa's skin prickled. "His?"
The girl's gaze stayed on the dunes. "He always had weird creations."
The way she said it—casual, almost annoyed—made Alisa's stomach drop. Like this wasn't an accident. Like the world being wrong was someone's habit.
Alisa opened her mouth to ask who—
But the words died when her tongue stuck to her teeth. Her throat was so dry it hurt to breathe.
The girl turned slightly, finally looking at her like she was noticing how close to collapse she was.
"There's water," she said. "Come on."
Alisa hesitated for half a heartbeat, then stumbled after her—because staying alone in the Sablewaste with something that could wear her sister's voice wasn't an option.
They walked. Alisa's boots sank into dunes and filled with grit. Her ushanka was damp with sweat, black hair sticking to her cheeks and neck. Every breath felt thick, like she had to force air through honey.
She kept glancing back, expecting the door to return.
It didn't.
Then the air changed—barely, but enough to make her breath hitch. Dampness. A faint clean scent hiding under the heat.
A low hollow between dunes appeared ahead. A pool of water reflecting the sky like glass. Thin green plants clinging around it, stubbornly alive.
An oasis.
Alisa didn't run. She didn't have anything left to run with. She just stumbled faster, throat tightening around a sound she couldn't get out.
She dropped to her knees at the edge and drank like she'd never drink again.
The water was cool. It tasted like nothing, and that nothingness felt like mercy. It spilled down her chin. She coughed, choked, drank again anyway until her stomach cramped.
Then she splashed her face. Dragged wet hands down her neck. For a moment, she could breathe.
She leaned forward over the pool—
And saw herself.
At first it was only a smear of pale and dark, the surface trembling from her shaking. But as the water settled, her reflection sharpened.
A girl. Fifteen. Pale skin with a faint rosy undertone that looked wrong under this sun—winter skin forced into a furnace. Deep black hair, long and slightly wavy, damp at the roots, stuck in strands to her cheeks and collar. Piercing blue eyes too wide, rimmed red, as if the tears had been scraped into them. Light freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose beneath the dirt. Cracked lips. Dust smeared along her face and throat. Small abrasions on her bare hands and palms where sand and panic had torn her up.
Average height. Slender—almost fragile-looking when she wasn't moving.
Her white ushanka sat crooked, fur damp against her forehead. Her coat wasn't on—clutched against her chest like a lifeline. The thermal layers clung with sweat. White winter boots. White thermal pants. A white-black skirt stiff over everything, absurd in a desert.
And in her trembling hand—held so tightly her knuckles had gone white—was the silver necklace with the half-moon pendant, pressed into her palm like it was the last thing keeping her from dissolving into this heat.
The longer she stared, the less she recognized the girl in the water.
It wasn't just the dirt or the sun or the way her own eyes looked too big for her face. It was the expression—like something inside her had been cracked open and left that way. Like she'd been turned inside out and couldn't remember how to be normal again.
She blinked hard, and the reflection blinked back.
Behind her, the sand stayed silent.
Alisa scooped another handful of water and drank slower this time, forcing herself not to choke. Her throat burned anyway. When she finally leaned back, her arms were shaking from holding her weight up, and the pendant had left a crescent-shaped dent in her palm.
The girl—Iris—sat down on the sand as if heat and thirst were things that happened to other people. She watched Alisa with the same quiet attention as before, but there was something less distant now. Less like a voice in her head and more like… someone who could actually be standing there.
"You're going to cook in that," Iris said, nodding once at the pile of winter layers.
Alisa looked down at her coat, then at the thermal shirt clinging to her ribs. Even sitting still, sweat kept creeping down her spine. The idea of putting the coat back on made her stomach turn.
"I know," she whispered. Her voice still sounded wrong—too small in a place that huge. "I— I just… it's all I have."
Iris's gaze flicked to the coat in her arms. "Do you want something better for this climate?"
Alisa hesitated.
A stupid part of her wanted to snap is this a joke? A smarter part of her remembered sand turning into hands and a door vanishing like it had never existed. Pride didn't belong out here. Pride was something you died with.
"Yes," she said quickly, then swallowed. "Yes. Please."
Then, immediately—because her chest tightened at the thought of losing the last pieces of home—she added, softer, "But I… I want to keep my old clothes. I don't want to throw them away."
Iris blinked once, like that made sense.
"Keep them," she said.
Alisa stared at her. "I can't carry all of this forever."
"You can carry it until you decide you can't," Iris replied, and for the first time it sounded almost… normal. Not mystical. Just honest. "That's your choice."
Alisa's throat tightened again, but she nodded, because if she spoke she'd probably start crying all over.
Iris lifted one hand.
Not dramatically. No chant. No glowing circles.
She just lifted her hand and turned her palm upward, like she was feeling the air.
The heat shimmered.
For a second, Alisa thought the mirage was playing tricks on her again—then the shimmer gathered. Threads of pale fabric appeared out of nothing, the way fog condenses into water. It wasn't light. It wasn't smoke. It looked like the air itself had decided to become cloth.
The fabric twisted and folded with quiet precision. Layers formed—soft, breathable, sand-colored. A long, loose tunic with sleeves that would keep sun off skin. Lightweight trousers that narrowed at the ankles so sand wouldn't climb inside. A wrap-scarf, wide enough to cover head and neck, and a simple sash. There was even a short outer vest—thin, but structured—like something meant to protect without trapping heat.
It looked like clothing you might see in a desert market. Practical, moving easily, elegant in its simplicity—almost like the outline of a dancer's outfit, but made modest and travel-ready. Nothing revealing. Just built for survival.
Iris let the bundle settle into her hands and held it out.
Alisa didn't take it immediately. Her hands trembled. She kept waiting for the world to punish her for accepting gifts from things she didn't understand.
But the cloth didn't bite. It didn't feel wrong.
It felt… real.
She took it with both hands, as if it might crumble if she held it too lightly.
"Where—" Alisa started, then her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Where did you get this?"
Iris shrugged, small. "It's not hard."
Alisa stared at her. "That's insane."
Iris looked mildly unimpressed. "You were just shot in a barn that isn't here. The insane part happened earlier."
Alisa almost laughed—an ugly, broken sound that turned into a breath instead. She looked down at the clothes again, then back at her coat lying on the sand beside her.
"I need to change," she said.
"Mm." Iris nodded toward a cluster of scrubby green at the oasis edge. "Go behind that. I'll wait."
Alisa grabbed her coat first, hugging it tight against her chest like it could shield her from reality. Then she stumbled behind the thin plants, crouched, and changed with shaking fingers.
The desert clothes felt strange against her skin at first—too light, too loose—until the air moved through them and she realized she could breathe again. When she wrapped the scarf around her head and neck, the sun stopped stabbing directly into her scalp.
She folded her winter layers as best as she could. The thermal shirt. The skirt. The ushanka—damp and heavy now. She picked up her coat last, brushing sand off it, and held it close, deciding she'd rather suffer carrying it than lose it.
When she stepped back out, Iris was already standing.
Alisa clutched the coat in one arm, the pendant still in her other hand like an anchor. "Okay," she whispered, voice steadier than before. "Now what?"
Iris's eyes lifted, tracking the position of the sun like she didn't need to squint.
"We leave," she said.
Alisa glanced at the horizon, dread creeping back in. "Where?"
"Anywhere not here," Iris answered simply. Then, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, she added, "We need to get out of the Sablewaste before night."
Alisa's stomach dropped. "Why? What happens at night?"
Iris made a small sound—half sigh, half shrug.
"It's just an annoyance," she said. "But I'd rather not deal with it."
The way she said it—casual, almost bored—made Alisa's skin prickle all over again.
Alisa tightened her grip on her coat and pendant, swallowed her fear, and nodded once.
"Okay," she said, because she didn't have any better word than that.
And then she followed Iris away from the water and back into the dunes, the oasis shrinking behind them like a brief mercy the desert would pretend never happened.
They walked until the desert stopped feeling endless and started feeling deliberate—like it was guiding them somewhere whether Alisa wanted it or not.
The dunes flattened into hard-packed sand and scattered stone. Her boots stopped sinking so much. The heat still pressed on her shoulders, but the air shifted—less like a furnace, more like a held breath. Even the light changed, thinning from blinding white into something slightly softer as the sun angled lower.
Alisa kept her coat hooked over her arm despite the weight and the stupidity of it. It was the only piece of her old world she could physically hold. Every time her fingers tightened around the fabric, she felt less like a mirage.
She didn't talk much. Her throat hurt. Her thoughts hurt worse.
Iris walked ahead without haste, as if the distance was an inconvenience, not a threat. Every so often she glanced back—briefly, humanly—just to make sure Alisa was still upright.
Then, after what felt like too many hours and not enough at the same time, Alisa saw something that didn't belong.
A strip of stone cutting across the sand.
Not a road with wheel-ruts. Not a street lined with buildings. Just a narrow stone path—ancient slabs half-buried, bleached by sun, leading to a single dark shape sitting alone in the middle of nowhere.
A small inn.
That was the only word her mind could give it. A squat building of rough wood and stone, one story with a shallow roof, like it had hunkered down against sandstorms and decided it would rather be ugly than dead. There were two palms nearby—thin, stubborn things—and a low trough in the shade that looked like it had held water at some point in its life. No village. No lights. No smoke. Just this one building, existing on the edge of the desert like a question.
Alisa slowed, her exhaustion catching up to her all at once. The sight of a door that wasn't standing alone, that wasn't whispering with her sister's voice, made her chest tighten with something dangerously close to hope.
She didn't trust it.
But her body wanted it anyway.
Iris stopped a few paces from the entrance. The inn's front was quiet—weathered boards, a small overhang, and a hanging sign that had been scrubbed nearly blank by years of wind. No voices inside. No movement behind the slats of the shutters. It looked closed, or empty, or both.
Alisa swallowed and stepped up beside Iris, hugging her coat closer to her ribs. The fabric smelled faintly of snow and sweat and old fear.
"Is… this safe?" she managed, voice raw.
Iris's shoulders lifted in a small shrug. "Safe enough."
That wasn't reassuring. Somehow it was still the most reassuring thing Alisa had heard since the gun.
Iris reached out, and for a second Alisa thought she was going to knock. Instead, Iris's hand disappeared into… nowhere. Like she'd slipped her fingers into a pocket in the air itself.
When her hand came back, she was holding a small cloth pouch.
It looked ordinary. Worn. Tied with a simple cord.
She placed it in Alisa's palm.
It had weight. It made a faint, unmistakable clink.
Alisa's fingers tightened around it automatically. Her eyes snapped up. "What is this?"
"Don't lose it," Iris said.
Alisa blinked, confused and suddenly desperate for something clearer. "Why?"
"It's important," Iris replied, like that was the full explanation and anything beyond it would only complicate things.
Alisa stared down at the pouch again. The little metallic sound inside made her stomach twist. Not because it was scary—because it wasn't. Because it felt like a lifeline, and she didn't understand why she'd been given one.
"…Okay," she whispered. "I won't."
Iris nodded once, simple and final.
Then Iris looked past her, toward the inn's door. Toward the shade under the roof. Toward the silence inside. For the first time since the desert, Iris's face did something like soften—just a fraction, as if she was leaving Alisa at the edge of something and couldn't decide whether to be kind or practical.
"I'll go now," Iris said.
Alisa's heart lurched. "Wait—what? Where are you going?"
Iris didn't answer.
There wasn't a flash of light. No wind. No dramatic vanishing.
One moment Iris was standing there, white hair unmoving in the heavy heat.
And the next moment she simply wasn't.
As if reality had blinked and decided Iris didn't need to be part of the scene anymore.
Alisa stood in front of the small inn, alone with the sun, the sand, and the quiet creak of the hanging sign. Her winter coat in one arm. The pouch in her hand.
She stared at the empty space Iris had occupied, then slowly turned her eyes to the inn's dark doorway.
And her throat tightened, because now there was no guide.
Just her.
And the door.
She stood in the doorway for a heartbeat too long, letting her eyes adjust.
The inn felt like a pocket cut out of the desert—cooler than outside, but not cold. Air that had been sitting still for hours. Dust. Old wood. A faint smell of dried herbs and something sour-sweet like spilled drink that had seeped into floorboards years ago and never fully left.
She stepped in carefully.
The boards gave a tired little creak under her boots. It made her flinch anyway.
The room was small—one main space with a counter on the right, a few rough tables and chairs scattered like someone had stopped halfway through arranging them. Shutters half-closed over narrow windows let in thin stripes of daylight. Dust motes drifted lazily through them, slow as falling ash.
Behind the counter sat an old man.
He was wrapped in sun-worn layers—loose cloth meant for heat and sand, not for snow. A pale scarf around his neck. Sleeves pushed back slightly. His hands were thick and veined, the skin tough like it had argued with weather for decades.
His beard was grey and full, not neatly trimmed—more like a man who owned a knife but didn't waste it on vanity. The hair on his head was thin, silver at the temples. He was reading a book held close in the dim, brow furrowed with quiet focus.
She took one more step.
The floor creaked again.
The old man's eyes lifted—sharp, assessing. Not startled, but instantly present. He didn't stand. He simply watched her the way someone watches a stray animal in a storm: cautious, curious, ready for it to bolt or bite.
He closed the book with one finger keeping the page, as if he didn't want to lose his place.
"Evening," he said.
Alisa's throat tightened. She hadn't realized how much she was bracing for hostility until she heard a normal greeting.
She managed a small nod. Her fingers tightened around the pouch Iris had given her until the fabric pressed into her skin.
The old man's gaze flicked over her—bare hands, dust on her clothes, the way she hovered in the doorway like she might sprint back outside any second.
"You lost?" he asked, not unkindly. Just… plain.
She opened her mouth to answer—
—and the words he'd spoken slid cleanly into her mind.
Not Russian. Not anything she knew.
But she understood it anyway, perfectly, like her brain had always had a shelf for this language and someone had just knocked the dust off.
Her stomach turned with a sudden, sharp fear.
She forced herself to speak. And when she did, what came out of her mouth was the same language.
Her own voice sounded wrong to her ears—familiar tone, unfamiliar shape.
"I…" Her throat felt scraped raw. She swallowed. "Yes. I think so."
The old man blinked once, slow. He leaned forward a little, forearms resting on the counter.
"You're alone?"
She nodded again, too fast. Like she was afraid the answer would change if she didn't give it immediately.
His eyes softened a fraction. Not sympathy exactly—more like recognition. He'd seen people walk in with that look before.
"You want food?" he offered. "Water? A room?"
The word water made her mouth hurt. She almost said yes automatically, then caught herself.
She didn't even know where "yes" led in this place.
"I…" She glanced at the tables, the shadows, the quiet corners. Her heartbeat was still too loud in her ears. "Where am I?"
The old man's brows drew together. Genuine confusion this time.
"…Here?" he said, like he wasn't sure if she was joking.
"No." Her voice shook. She hated that it did. "I mean—what is this place called. What region. What country."
He held her gaze a moment longer, then exhaled through his nose like someone deciding not to make things harder.
"You're in Kharif's Reach," he said, slow and clear. "This is the reach—trade path, wells, a few inns like mine. The desert's in the middle of everything."
She stared at him.
Kharif's Reach meant nothing. It sounded like a line from a book she'd never read.
And that made the fear sharpen.
The old man watched her process it. His eyes flicked to her hands again.
"You got money?" he asked, careful. Not greedy—practical.
Her fingers twitched around the pouch.
"I…" She hesitated. "I don't know. Someone gave me—this."
She didn't move to open it. She didn't trust herself not to spill its contents onto the floor like proof she didn't belong anywhere.
The old man gave a tiny nod, like that was enough.
"Alright," he said. "If you're asking where you are, you need a map."
He turned and crouched, reaching under the counter. Wood scraped. Something heavy slid forward. He laid a folded sheet of thick parchment on the counter and opened it with both hands, smoothing it down with a palm.
The map was old—creased, handled, edges darkened. Names were inked across it in neat writing, some refreshed as if traced over again after fading.
He tapped the center.
A wide stretch of sand-colored shading covered most of the middle.
"This is the Sahra Vey," he said. "The desert."
His finger moved in small circles across it, indicating scattered symbols—tiny palm marks and little blue dots.
"Oases," he added. "Some permanent. Some… not. Depends on the year."
Then his finger slid south, where the map became denser—walls drawn thick, blocks of streets, a clustered sprawl like a living thing.
"The big city down here is Suraam," he said. "South. If you've got supplies and you don't mind heat."
Her eyes tracked north as his finger went the other way.
Above the desert, the parchment changed. A pale region was shaded almost white, jagged like a torn scar across the land.
He tapped it once, and even the way he did it—firm, brief—felt like a warning.
"The White Canyon," he said. "Don't go wandering up there if you like your bones where they are."
Alisa's gaze flicked east.
Blue ink. Waves sketched out until the edge of the parchment.
"Ocean," the old man said, following her eyes without needing to be asked.
Then west—small names at first, little dots for settlements, then the sand thinned and green ink began. Trees drawn close together.
"Villages," he said, tracing the route with his finger. "Then forest. After that—" He lifted his hand and gave a slight shrug. "Map ends. Not everyone cares what's past it."
Alisa stared at the parchment like it might suddenly rearrange itself into something she recognized.
Desert in the middle. A city in the south. A white canyon to the north. Ocean to the east. Forest to the west—then nothing.
Her mouth opened, then closed again.
The most terrifying part wasn't the map.
It was the fact she'd understood every word he said… and spoken back without knowing how.
She looked up at him, eyes wide, voice quiet and ragged.
"I… I understand you," she said. "But I've never heard this language in my life."
The old man's expression didn't change much—just a slow narrowing of the eyes, like he was trying to decide what kind of trouble this was.
He glanced down at the map again, then back up at her.
"…You hit your head?" he asked, blunt but not cruel.
Alisa didn't answer.
She just stared at the names, at the borders, at the desert marked in the middle like a wound.
And she realized—deep in her stomach—that this wasn't a dream you woke up from.