Page 102 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
He looked up toward the sky, toward the Watcher, toward the still-breathing land.
And under his breath, he said, “I came to carry this with her.”
“And I will.”
They stayed like that for a long time.
The bond unfinished, the world holding its breath.
And beneath them, the desert began to stir.
CHAPTER 21
THE SKY ABOVE them had come unhinged, washed in ribbons of molten light and shadow, blue stretched too far, time unwinding like thread in the wind.
And they weren’t alone.
The land was shifting. Waiting.
Asher knelt beside her, gaze fixed on the horizon. His jaw was tight. His whole body tense, like he could feel the change coming before it broke.
Nora sat up slowly, the motion sending a ripple through the earth.
Something in the desert had been disturbed.
And it was waking. A pocket of silence cracked the air open like a void. A pressure drop so sudden it made her ears pop. Asher’s head turned sharply toward the center of the hollow, his shoulders tensing.
The wind rose next.
It circled them in a widening ring, dragging grit across their skin. The sand shivered. The light shifted again. The Watcher’s shadow twisted sideways.
And the ground began to shake.
Nora could feel it. An old rhythm, older than language. A heartbeat. The desert’s.
It had seen them. It had waited for them. And now that they stood together, it would not make space. It would make trial.
Asher pulled her upright, and the moment her feet touched earth, the mark on her throat flared. A blinding ring of light bloomed around them. The same circle she had scorched intothe earth during the failed ritual. But now, it recognized them both.
The Hollow closed.
The rocks shifted subtly, like vertebrae cracking into place around a spine.
They were inside something now. Something sacred. Something ancient.
A trial ring. A mouth. A trap.
“Asher,” she said, voice rasping. “Something’s wrong.”
“I know.”
“Like… the desert wants to eat us wrong.”
“I know.”
A jagged scream split the wind, from something made of land and hunger and loss. The sand lifted into a wall around the edge of the circle, high and hissing. They were sealed in.
The trial had begun.
