The sand draws her down without urgency — no collapse, no violence, just the unhurried opening of a trapdoor. Mira presses the pendant flat against her sternum and keeps her palms open, the way her mother taught her to receive without grasping. The light above narrows to a bright seam, then closes. She expects darkness. Instead, an amber glow rises from somewhere beneath her — warm, faintly pulsing — and her feet find solid ground without impact: packed earth, cool and smooth. The chamber is larger than it should be. Sand walls curve away into shadow, and the glow has no visible source; it seems to breathe upward from the floor itself. At the centre of the space, perfectly still, stands something tall enough to disappear into a ceiling she cannot see — a column of loose, pale sand held upright by nothing, shaped almost like a person. It turns toward her. Where a mouth would be, a faint spiral groove traces itself slowly into the sand.