The desert didn't forgive. It remembered.
It remembered every footstep, every misplaced breath, every drop of blood spilled into its sun-bleached veins. Niri had learned that truth with each dawn—each time she woke under the scorched sky, wrapped in the same silence that never offered mercy.
She moved now not with purpose, but necessity. One foot dragged through the dunes, the other barely following. Her muscles burned. Her skin blistered beneath the relentless sun. A jagged wound on her left side had gone from sharp pain to a dull, pulsing throb. She hadn't looked at it in two days. There was nothing new to see—only damage she couldn't afford to feel.
The sand underfoot shifted with each labored step. It felt like walking across a living thing, one that constantly threatened to swallow her whole. And perhaps it was. Dakun wasn't a planet—it was a graveyard pretending to be a world.
She clenched her jaw, squinting toward the horizon. Nothing. Just more heat, more silence, more endless dune. The mirages mocked her—liquid shadows dancing at the edge of her vision like ghosts that refused to die.
"Should've died three collapses ago," she muttered. Her voice was hoarse, dry as the dust clinging to her lips. "Would've been easier."
Her hand tightened around the small glowing orb hanging from her belt. It pulsed dimly, like a heart too tired to beat. She still hadn't figured out what it was—not really. But it had light, and that made it hers.
The ground shifted.
Not a natural shift. Not wind. Not erosion.
A vibration.
She froze.
The next moment, it came again—heavier this time. A deep, subterranean thrum that rolled through the earth and up her legs like the early notes of a buried drumbeat.
Worm.
Her body moved on instinct, decades-old reflex overriding thought. She dropped low, then hit the sand hard—twisting, sliding, rolling into the dune's hollow. Her limbs buried themselves beneath the surface in practiced silence. She pressed her face into the scorched grains, heartbeat thrumming against the skin of the earth.
Stillness.
Her breaths became shallow, deliberate. Even blinking felt too loud.
Far across the dunes, something stirred beneath the sand with brutal force. The kind of motion you didn't survive—just escaped.
The first collision was distant—more sound than shape. A low-frequency boom that echoed through the desert like a god's footfall.
The second was closer.
She didn't see the creature, but she knew the signs. Air pressure bending. Sound muffled, then warped. Dunes shifting sideways beneath invisible weight.
A second worm. Larger. Or worse—a rival.
They didn't hunt prey like animals. They fought like storms—territorial, unreasoning, seismic.
The ground trembled beneath her, and she could feel their paths intersecting in a way that spoke of inevitability. Somewhere beyond the rise, they collided.
The world split.
Sand shot into the air in plumes. Pressure cascaded outward. Something metallic groaned behind her—a long, awful sound like bones under tension.
Niri knew that sound.
She turned her head, just enough to catch the silhouette of her tower—the crooked ruin of scavenged iron she'd claimed as home.
It was leaning.
Then falling.
Her muscles screamed as she rolled out of the way, body screaming from the sudden motion. A column of rusted metal crashed inches from her leg, sending shards into the sand like knives. One found her thigh. It sliced—not deep, but far enough to draw blood and worse: movement.
She bit down hard, teeth grinding.
Don't cry.
Don't scream.
Don't move.
Above her, the sky danced with sand and noise. The tower collapsed fully with a groan that sounded almost sad. Like even the junk had given up.
She pressed her hand to the wound, warm and slick. Her fingers shook, not from fear—but because her body was breaking rhythm.
"You just had to fall today," she whispered. "Figures."
The worms didn't care. Their violence was a storm passing overhead, indifferent to anything smaller than themselves.
And she was less than that.
Just a bloodstain waiting to be erased.
There was blood on her leg, but it wasn't gushing.
Good. That meant she could still move.
Probably.
Niri exhaled once, slow and measured. Her fingers trembled as she pushed herself upright, grit grinding against the wound in her thigh. The pain had settled into something familiar—a low, rhythmic throb like a drumbeat under her skin.
She moved the way you learn to move when the world wants you gone: quietly, unevenly, half-crawling, half-dragging across the side of a broken dune. Her body protested every motion, but her will was louder than the pain.
She kept her silhouette jagged, irregular. Worms followed patterns. Echoes. Footsteps that didn't make sense were harder to track.
The tower behind her gave one last dying moan as it crumpled fully into the sand.
She didn't look back.
No use mourning things that couldn't mourn you.
Her feet carried her forward in stuttering half-steps. The horizon shimmered in waves, and she couldn't tell if it was heat or her blood pressure. Everything inside her was working too hard—lungs burning, legs spasming, the taste of copper creeping up the back of her throat.
The dunes weren't soft anymore. They were jagged, sharp, hateful.
Wind howled across the sand, biting at her wounds. It got into her mouth, her eyes, her ears—abrasive and relentless, like the planet wanted her ground down to nothing.
"This how survival works, huh?" she rasped to no one. "You get chewed up slow, and then the planet buries what's left."
No voice answered. Not the orb. Not the wind. Not even herself.
Her vision started to fracture. Black dots clustered at the edges. Her heartbeat grew louder, but further away—like she was listening to her own death from a distance.
She didn't stop moving. Couldn't. If she stopped now, it wouldn't be rest—it would be ending.
Then her foot slipped.
She stumbled, awkward and ungraceful, her balance undone by blood and sand and exhaustion. Her knee hit first, then her elbow, and then her ribs—sharp, broken fire through her side.
Her world tilted. The sky spun. And then the sand welcomed her again.
She lay still, face half-buried, breath shallow. Her heart struggled to keep rhythm.
She blinked.
Once.
And that's when she saw it.
The shadow.
Not a worm.
Not a trick of the sun.
Something passed overhead—silent, smooth, shaped.
A ship.
She couldn't move. Could barely think.
The hum was too clean, too mechanical. Artificial. Unfamiliar.
A light flickered above her.
Then nothing.
She couldn't move.
Her limbs refused. Her breath came in shallow, fractured loops. The sand beneath her burned, but it didn't matter. Her body was locking up—too tired, too broken.
The shadow above her returned.
It wasn't a worm.
Too still. Too cold.
Too... shaped.
She blinked.
A soft hum passed through her skin, like pressure without touch.
Then a flicker of light—cool, white, foreign.
Her breath hitched.
The thing overhead wasn't alive. It didn't crawl, didn't breathe. It just hovered—watching. A shape with no scent, no sound except a quiet mechanical whir she'd never heard before.
Her body wanted to run.
Her instincts screamed.
But she couldn't obey. The last of her strength had bled out onto the sand. All she could do was lie there, half-covered, half-open, blinking up at the thing in the sky.
The light scanned over her again.
She didn't understand it.
Didn't trust it.
But... it hadn't killed her yet. That made it different.
The glowing orb on her hip flickered. Faint. Weak.
Almost like it recognized what hovered above.
She swallowed hard, throat raw. She opened her mouth to curse, or scream, or beg—she wasn't sure what—but no sound came out.
Then the sky dimmed.
The light faded.
Her vision blurred.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, she stopped fighting.
She let the sand take her.
Darkness swept in soft and silent—like sleep.
Or surrender.