Mira walks forward. The sand does not shift beneath the figure's feet — it stands as still as stone. She raises her hand, palm out, matching the gesture. Her fingers are still cold from the hollow. When her palm meets where the figure's hand should be, there is no resistance. The grain parts around her fingers like warm water. She does not pull away. Something moves through her — not warmth exactly, but recognition, the way a key feels when it finds the right notch. The spiral groove at the figure's face contracts, tightening like a slow blink. And then the sand speaks — not in words but in image, pressing geography into the back of her eyes: beyond the ridge, a doorway. Standing open. Unguarded. And through it, unmistakably, a sound she has not heard since she was seven. Her mother's voice. Singing.