Page 106 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
The dream shattered.
The world reset.
The sky blinked open overhead. The storm had not stopped.
But they were together now.
And the desert would have to burn to stop them.
The Hollow did not breathe them back into stillness. It shuddered.
A long, deep exhale pulled through the ring like the land itself had been holding its breath, waiting to see if they’d come back whole.
They had. But not untouched.
Nora stood in the circle’s heart, the earth warm beneath her feet, her mark glowing not just at her throat now but across her shoulders and down her forearms, veins of light threading through her skin like roots seeking the surface. Her breath came slow and hard. Her hands were fists. The obsidian blade pulsed in her palm.
Asher stood at her side, bark cracked and steaming down one arm. His ribs flared with golden scars. His glow was dimmer now, but steadier, grounded deep in the structure of him.
They turned their heads at the same moment.
The sky changed.
What had once been lightless shadow now broke open with color. Red and orange, green and silver. Something between clouds and fire. A bloom turned inside out above them, petal by petal, each pulse overhead casting new shadows across the Hollow’s jagged floor.
Then the wind came back, howling and screaming.
The wall of air hit them with such force Nora’s knees buckled. She landed hard, one palm catching herself in the dirt. Asher stepped in front of her, shielding her body with his own, teeth bared. The wind tore across them sideways, lifting sand into whirling towers, slicing their skin with air like glass.
The circle ignited, a ring of golden flame bursting up around them.
And from the center of the cracked basin, the creature rose again.
The same twisted form, blooming and broken, all root and bone and wrongness.
Its surface flickered between stone, bark, mirror.
Reflections rippled across it: Asher writhing in pain. Nora burning from the inside out. The land cracking open to swallow them whole.
She knew this thing. Had felt it in her dreams, in the vines, in the way the desert sometimes looked back.
But not now.
Now she stood.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” she said.
It hissed like wet sand against fire.
And charged.
Asher roared and ran to meet it. They collided in the center of the ring, claw against claw, light against shadow. The force of the impact knocked dust into the air like an explosion. Nora movedbehind them, dodging vines, ducking debris, eyes locked on the battle.
The storm thundered around them.
The wind picked up until the sound of it became almost music, low and pulsing. The Watcher loomed above them, cracking visibly now, lines of light spreading across its surface like veins through ancient stone. The desert wasn’t just attacking.
It was coming apart.
