Mira withdraws her hand from the sand_figure's grain and walks. The thread of light stretches ahead toward the ridge, thin and insistent, and she follows it up loose stone and old heat until she crests the top and stops. The doorway stands in a shallow hollow of pale, wind-scoured rock below: a frame of dark weathered wood, slightly taller than a person, no walls attached, no building behind it — just the frame, upright and alone in open desert. Through its opening the air is different. Cooler. Carrying the voice without distortion, the way a jar carries water. She walks down and steps across the threshold. The singing doesn't stop. The hollow vanishes behind her; she is standing inside a passage of pale stone she did not see from outside, and the voice is coming from somewhere ahead — close now, the way a candle looks close in the dark — just around the next turn.