Mira stuffs the vessel into the fold of her robe, against her ribs, and is already rising before the thought fully forms. Her camel reads the urgency in her hands — it lurches upright with a groan and breaks into a gallop before all four legs have found purchase. She rides north. The dunes blur past, shapeless and silent. Behind her, nothing follows — no sound, no shadow, no pursuing cry — yet the certainty builds in her chest that the desert is noticing. The vessel grows warmer against her skin with each stride, pulsing faintly, a slow rhythm like a second heartbeat. Then the sand ahead begins to rise. Not a dune. Something deliberate: a shape, tall and narrow, assembling itself from loose grain and stillness, filling the only pass between two black rock faces. It has no eyes, no mouth. It stands and waits. And from it comes the sound she cannot unhear — her name, spoken in her mother's voice.