CHAPTER 1
Fire In The Sand
Their up-armored Humvee never stood a chance.
One second Corporal Nathan Cole was staring at the road shimmering in the heat, the next the earth ripped open beneath them. The IED went off with a roar that swallowed thought, vision and breath all at once.
The blast tore the vehicle apart like it was paper. Steel plates peeled back, shredding flesh and bone in an instant. The gunner didn’t even scream, one moment he was there and the next he was in pieces on the desert floor. What was left of him slapped down onto the interior of the Humvee.
Cole felt himself lifted. Weightless then crushed as the Humvee landed on its side. Fire belched from the busted fuel line burning his arm through his uniform sleeve. His ears rang so hard he thought that blood was gushing from them but it was only his own pulse hammering in his head. He blinked hard, his vision blurring, his only thought was to get out, not feeling his injured arm.
He kicked at the twisted metal until it gave way, smoke clawed at his throat as the cabin filled with fire. He dragged himself into the desert air. His boots sank into a field of broken glass, shredded gear, twisted metal and pieces of his buddy, the gunner.
Private Diaz crawled out next, half of his face peeled away where shrapnel had kissed him. His left leg hung like ribbons of meat, pieces of metal clung to the wounds. He screamed once then clamped his jaw shut as he dragged himself with sheer adrenaline fueled stubbornness.
Sargent Keller staggered from the wreckage last, coughing up black smoke, his eyes wild. One sleeve was burned to nothing, his blistered skin shimmered in the sun. He looked at Cole, then at Diaz, then back to the Humvee burning bright against the desert sky.
Inside, one more of their squad still cooked, his screams were swallowed by the dunes until they finally faded. The smell. Oh God, the smell – burning fuel, roasted flesh and molten rubber hung heavy in the air. Cole gagged it back down, wiping soot from his mouth with a trembling hand.
The three of them were in the wreckage of what remained of their only means of transportation. A knot of silence broken only by the crackle of fire and the faint pop of ammunition cooking off in the Humvee. No radio. No water. No backup. Just the desert stretching on forever and the taste of ash in their mouths. They gathered what meager gear they could find along with their “battle rattle”, armor and helmets, slung their rifles across their backs and began to walk.
The desert swallowed the wreckage behind them. Cole didn’t look back, he couldn’t. It was just a pyre for the men they had lost, a beacon for scavengers, men or worse. They needed to get as far away as possible from the wreckage.
The sun had no mercy, it hung beautifully in the flawless blue sky. But its light was wicked, searing them as though it despised every living thing beneath it. It pressed down from above, baking their skin beneath their armor, boiling their skulls inside their helmets. Sweat dried faster than it could fall, leaving behind fine granules of salt. Every breath tasted of sand and gunpowder, their throats beyond the burning of thirst.
Diaz leaned against them both at first. Then just Cole. Diaz had his arm hooked around his shoulder, dragging his ruined leg through the sand. His uniform was soaked dark from his hip to his ankle, each step leaving crimson marks in the ever moving sand. He was stubborn, cursing at every stumble, certain that he could make it. But time stretched thin. Minutes dragged into hours. The horizon mocked them, nothing but rippling heat and the relentless crunch of their boots on the sand.
By the fourth mile, Diaz’s words began to slur. “I’m good, man…fuck…just give me a sec.” He tried to laugh but it came out wet, thick. Blood bubbled at his lips. His head lolled against Cole’s shoulder and his weight dragged heavier with each step.
Keller cursed under his breath. “He ain’t gonna make it.”
“Shut up!” Cole snapped. “Keep moving.”
They stumbled on, the three of them tethered together by will alone. But finally Diaz’s legs buckled under him. He crumpled to the sand, dragging Cole down with him. He wouldn’t rise again.
Cole tried to encourage his comrade. “C’mon Diaz, don’t you quit on me.”
Diaz’s eyes rolled, finding Cole’s face and then Keller’s. “Leave me.”
“…No,” Cole whispered.
Keller turned away, staring at the endless horizon. He didn’t argue. He couldn’t, he knew Diaz was right, he was dying.
Cole held his friend in his arms. He watched the light fade in Diaz’s eyes, watched his chest shudder one last time before it stilled. A large tear rolled down Cole’s sweaty face, leaving clean marks in the grime. The flies came almost instantly, crawling over his torn flesh, buzzing loud in the dead silence.
The desert didn’t mourn, it swallowed.
Keller hauled Cole to his feet. “Get up, soldier, we gotta move or we’re next.”
Cole forced his boots forward, the sand dragging at them. Each step was heavier than the last. Behind them, Diaz lay half buried already, the wind carrying grains of sand over his blood.
By dusk, the two surviving soldiers staggered to the shadow of a small oasis, its green glow almost holy against the fading light. Water glimmered at its heart, offering salvation.
Cole licked his sun cracked lips. He didn’t know how or why the oasis was there, he just wanted relief.
They stumbled for it, never seeing the shadows that were already waiting for them.
CHAPTER 2
The Oasis
The oasis looked like a dream carved into the desert. Palms bowed over a pool of clear water, their fronds whispering against the night breeze. The air here was cooler, almost sweet next to the scorched dunes. For the first time since the explosion, Cole’s chest loosened but only a little.
They fell to their knees at the water’s edge. They removed their helmets and plunged their heads into it, drinking deep despite the grit in their teeth. The water was cool, metallic, but it filled their bellies and cooled the fire in their throats. Cole lifted his head, Keller was beside him splashing water on his face, gulping down mouthfuls as if he was trying to drown himself.
They stayed at the water’s edge for a long time just drinking and breathing. Drinking and breathing. The desert no longer seemed like a hungry animal ready to strike. The palms rose around them like guardians, their shadows long and swaying in the light of the full moon.
Cole found dates beneath one of the palms, sticky and black in the moonlight. He tore into them without hesitation, handing a handful to Keller. The sweetness coated his tongue, heavy and sticky. He grunted his thanks, chewing in silence.
For the first time all day, they laughed. Just a little. Just enough to feel human again. The kind of laughter that bursts out when the body is too tired to hold it back. Keller leaned against a tree, chewing slowly with his eyes closed. Cole stretched his legs out toward the fire they managed to build out of dried palm fronds and scattered brush. The flames cracked and hissed, and for once the sound didn’t mean death.
It was a comfort and for a moment it felt like home. But even then, Keller sat with his back to a tree, his rifle laying at his side, scanning the dark beyond the oasis. Cole’s .9mm sat on his chest, his hand lying on it. Habit. Survival. War. Relief only went so far out here.
Cole stared into the flames but something in his gut twisted. The night pressed in, heavy and still. The fire was supposed to push the dark away, yet the shadows of the desert seemed to thicken just beyond its light. Keller shifted against the tree, chewing slower. His eyes were scanning over the sand, the water, the darkness. He spat a pit into the sand. “Feels like eyes on us.”
Cole glanced at him. “We’re just jumpy. After today?” He sighed. “Who wouldn’t be?”
But Keller wasn’t convinced, his hand on his rifle, fingers twitching against the grip. “No,” his voice was flat. “Not jumpy. Watched.” He scanned again. “I can feel it.”
The words hung between them sharper than the crackle of the fire. Cole tried to laugh it off but it came out hollow and dry. He found himself staring at the pool of water. There were ripples on it even though neither of them touched it. Then he thought for a moment he saw something pale moving under the water.
He blinked and it was gone.
Cole rubbed his eyes telling himself that the ripples in the pool were nothing. Nerves. A concussion. The blast and Diaz bleeding out. Could be anything. They weren’t right and any shadow could look like a threat.
But the feeling didn’t fade. A combat soldier feels it, knows it. The palms whispered on, the fire crackled low and every now and then the silence seemed to shift. Like something moving, with pressure, with malice.
Keller sat with his rifle across his lap now, gaze cutting back and forth through the dark. “I swear to God,” he muttered, “something out there’s got eyes on us.”
Cole didn’t argue. He felt it, too. The prickle at the back of his neck, the weight of unseen attention. The fire was warm yes but useless when the bullets start flying.
They lasted another hour, trading short words, chewing dates. Their paranoia gradually easing. Eventually Keller’s eyes grew heavy, his chin dipping against his chest. Cole fought the pull of sleep, forcing himself upright, watching the fire sink lower.
But exhaustion was a tide, relentless. The desert hand wrung them out, left them hollow. Muscles twitched, nerves gave way, and finally, with weapons within reach and the fire burning to coals both men faded into sleep.
The oasis was quiet. The water stilled. The palms stood unmoving and the shadows leaned in close.
Watching.
Waiting.
CHAPTER 3
Tracks In The Sand
The morning came soft. Warm. Kind.
Cole woke to the hush of the palms moving in a faint breeze and the shimmer of sunlight on the pool. His body ached. His head throbbed. His throat was raw and for a moment he could pretend that the war was far away. The air smelled cleaner here, not of fuel or blood but of water and green things.
Keller was already awake. He was at the water’s edge splashing water on his face. Some of the fine lines of exhaustion on his face had smoothed out though his eyes kept the darkness from the day before.
They ate more dates in silence, chewing slowly, enjoying the stickiness on their tongues. Cole found himself almost grateful for the oasis. It was if it was placed there for them alone.
Then Keller froze. His gaze fixed on the sand near the water’s edge.
“Cole,” he whispered, pointing to the sand. “You see that?”
Cole stood and walked closer. Keller behind him, rifle in hand. The sand rippled outward in soft ridges, broken here and there by indentations. Not boots. Not paws. Something else. The prints were too long, too narrow with drag marks behind them like something had been pulled along.
They circled the pool. Cole’s stomach tightened. “No animal I know makes tracks like that.”
Keller’s hands tightened around his rifle. “I told you.” He began scanning their surroundings. “Eyes on us.”
The tracks wound between the palms, vanishing in the deeper sand. They found them again in the sand where the fire had been the night before. The two exchanged confused looks. A soldier knows when he is being stalked. When he is being hunted. Keller felt that prickle along his skin, the weight of unseen eyes on them.
They found the marks again, moving slowly, rifles raised. The prints grew stranger the farther they went. Less like feet and more like scorched holes in the sand where the edges were blackened and melted as if touched by flame.
Then the air shifted.
A breeze wafted through the palms, colder than it should have been. It raised gooseflesh on Cole’s arms. The morning desert sun was bright in the sky but under the palms the temperature seemed to drop drastically. The shadows began to lengthen and bend unnaturally. For a brief moment they reminded Keller of his days sitting on the dock watching the sun go down, cold beer in his hand, his girl by his side. He had to shake the image out of his head.
A whisper rode on the wind, too soft to make out but loud enough to be impossible to ignore. Not Arabic. Not English. The syllables were jagged, hissing like hot metal plunging into water.
Cole froze. “You hear that?”
Keller stiffly nodded. “I thought it was the wind at first but it’s not.”
The whisper came again, closer this time slithering through the palms as if it knew them. Cole gritted his teeth and scanned the tree line. His rifle was up but his hands trembled with exhaustion, his weapon feeling heavier by the minute. Keller moved in a slow circle, eyes darting between the shadows. His breath was ragged but measured, the way a man breathes when he knows a trigger pull might be the last thing he does.
They kept moving despite the fear, following the trail. At first Cole thought the oasis was small, a pocket of green being choked by the desert. But the deeper they went, the farther it stretched. The pool they had slept beside vanished behind the trees, and more palms rose ahead, thick and endless as though they stepped into a forest that shouldn’t be there.
“How big is this place?” Cole muttered.
“Too big,” Keller said. “Shouldn’t be more than a handful of palms and a puddle of water. But this…” He swept his rifle to take in the dense wall of trunks. “…this doesn’t make sense.”
The tracks carried on, their blackened edges clearer here in the dimmer light. Each print was deep as if something heavy had pressed into the sand. They wound between trees, circling, twisting, pulling them deeper.
After what felt like an hour of walking, the trail abruptly and violently came to an end. Not faded. Not scattered. Just ended. The last mark was deep, scorched and melted sand fused into brittle glass around it. Beyond that, nothing but smooth, untouched sand. A strange clearing of sand dunes and bare clay earth.
Cole stared at it uneasily. “Tracks just don’t stop.”
Keller crouched, brushing his hand near the glassy edge without touching it. “No, they don’t.” He looked around, “where the fuck did it go?”
He rose from his crouch, rifle still tight in his hands. He studied the clearing in silence as though measuring the air itself. The Sargent had fantastic instincts and eyes like a hawk. Cole waited for him to say something grounding, something steady but Keller only shook his head.
The wind shifted again.
It slid through the palms with a suddenness that made Cole’s heart skip a beat, a cold draft that seemed to move against the heat of the day. The scorched footprint hissed slightly when the air hit it, a brittle crack, like burning embers. Sand stirred in a small spiral, dancing farther up just long enough to suggest shape then fell flat and silent.
Keller and Cole exchanged glances, both in unspoken agreement and warning.
“This isn’t for us.” Keller finally said, breaking the silence. “We need to get out of here…Now!” He scanned around, “back to the gear so we can make a plan.”
“Make a plan?” Cole muttered but no answer would come. The sergeant was already turning around.
They retraced their steps through the unnatural grove. The silence pressed in, harder on the return journey. Cole’s eyes scanned for the soft glow and shimmer of the water. The palms seemed denser, the shadows longer, the distance stretched. Finally the water appeared again, quiet and still as if it had been waiting for them.
By the time they reached the edge, the sun was sliding down behind the dunes. Both men settled near the water, their rifles close, chewing on dates. The fire they lit was smaller than before. Neither men spoke, both of them were drained.
Cole stared into the flames, listening to the swishing palms and the occasional whisper of wind. He wondered if the tracks truly ended or if the thing that made them finally decided to let them go.
Sleep came slow and uneasy. As Cole’s eyes closed, the certainty that something was still watching them lingered in the back of his mind. He could still feel it, or was that a paranoia colder than the desert night.
CHAPTER 4
The Water’s Edge
The desert night settled hard and cold, wrapping the oasis in silence. The fire crackled low, throwing thin tongues of orange against the palms but the shadows behind it were thicker than they had been before. So black that they seemed to have substance, pressing close as if the trees were leaning in.
Cole stirred awake first. His eyes opened to the fire’s glow, the rising sun was barely touching the horizon. He stretched and for a moment he thought he saw movement across the pool. He blinked hard. But a shimmer, tall and wavering, like heat rising from the asphalt, began to appear before him. He rubbed the grit from his eyes but the shape remained.
It thickened. The shimmer drew together, strands of smoke weaving themselves into something that resembled a man but wrong in every way. The shoulders hunched too wide. The arms stretched too long. The head sat at an unnatural angle and the air around it rippled as though reality itself was recoiling. The sand beneath it blackened and hissed, yet it floated and made no sound when it moved.
“Sarge,” Cole whispered. His voice cracked as though the entire world was silent.
Keller woke instantly, rifle in hand before his eyes were fully opened. He followed Cole’s stare and his breath hissed sharp between his teeth.
The Djinn glided closer to their fire. Its skin was ash pale, fissured with glowing cracks of molten rock beneath the surface. Smoke curled from the seams, drifting upward dissipating into long black tendrils. They would cling to its form before unraveling into the air like something alive that didn’t want to leave.
Its lower body streamed into a shifting column of smoke, never touching the ground. Cole wondered if the tracks they had followed were even real or if this creature had painted them in the sand as bait. Above the smoke, the Djinn’s torso loomed unnaturally tall. The shoulders were broad, the chest powerfully built but its shape was warped. Muscles were stretched too long like a parody of a man.
The creature’s face formed last, sliding into focus through the haze. It was sharp, boned and cruel. The mouth stretched too wide to belong to any human, revealing a cavernous nothingness lined with white, jagged ivory. Its skin there was thinner, almost translucent, showing veins of fire pulsing underneath. The eyes burned brightest of all. Twin furnaces of molten orange and red. Their glow flickered like flame and pinned the soldiers in place, it blinked, slow and deliberate. Long enough for Keller to raise his rifle, Cole seemed transfixed on the Djinn, in a daze.
“Fire!” Keller’s voice cracked from panic. He squeezed the trigger, rifle barking bullets into the apparition. Bullets ripped through the air and sailed through the Djinn. It did not flinch. The shots echoed across the dunes like laughter. Then the laughter became real, rolling out of the being’s chest like a furnace exhaling joy.
The sound bent the air, made their stomachs twist and their heads swim. The oasis itself seemed to recoil. The palms leaned back, the water shivered and even the sand seemed to claw back.
Cole’s hands trembled, but not from fear alone. The ground beneath him felt unstable, as if it might open and swallow him whole. His ears rang with whispers of a language he could almost understand, words that pushed at the back of his skull.
The Djinn leaned forward, its face stretching nearer until the sweat evaporated on their faces. Then with a final rasping chuckle, it vanished into smoke, leaving only the scent of burning copper and the aftertaste of ash on their tongues.
Cole swallowed hard, his throat as dry as the sand, staring at the place it had been. Whatever that thing was it had left its mark and Cole knew he would never sleep soundly again. He looked over at Keller. “What the fuck was that?”
Keller shrugged, his eyes wide. “Dunno,” he looked around. “But bullets don’t touch it.”
CHAPTER 5
The Loop
Morning light spilled into the grove, bright and indifferent, as if nothing unnatural had happened. Cole sat by the fire’s ashes, staring at the blackened spot where the Djinn had risen. His rifle lay across his lap, safety off, his hands were steady but only because he forced them to be.
“It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be.” Keller muttered, breaking the silence. He paced the edges of the pond, his jaw tight. “Couldn’t be. Maybe the heat, exhaustion, that’s all. We’re rattled, maybe have head injuries. That’s it.”
Cole’s gaze didn’t leave the scorched sand. “Bullets went through it. I saw it. It kept standing there…laughing.” His words dragged slow, “that wasn’t in my head.”
Keller kicked at the sand, shouldering his pack hard. “Doesn’t matter. We’re leaving. Now.”
They packed quickly, slung their rifles over their shoulders and picked a bearing. The decision was simple: put distance between themselves and the oasis. The place was a trap, a tear in the desert.
They walked.
The palms thinned as the sun climbed higher, clamping down on their helmets and packs until every step felt like punishment. Sand dunes stretched wide, blinding in the light, rippling into the endless horizon. For a time the silence of the desert wrapped them tight. The desert pressed down on them with a silence so stifling and total it felt less like an absence and more like a weight. It smothered every thought, every noise. It was only shattered by the occasional sound of their broken, labored breathing and the soft crunch of their boots in the sand.
An hour passed, maybe more. Then the palms appeared again.
At first Cole thought they had found another oasis, smaller, maybe connected to the other. Relief sparked, quick and desperate until the familiar arrangement of trees snapped into focus. His stomach dropped. The crooked trunk leaning out over the water, the split in the largest palm and the half buried ammo can in the sand.
It was the same place.
Keller froze. “No! No! No, we went straight. We never turned. Fuck!” He spun in a slow circle, scanning the dunes, his face pale under the sunburn.
Cole’s jaw tightened. “Desert doesn’t bend like that…” he looked around. “Not unless something is making it.” He locked eyes with Keller, “…we need water.” The relentless thirst drove them to the water. They filled their bellies and their emptied canteens.
Keller stood. “Alright. Let’s go. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
They picked another bearing and set out, again. This time they kept strict bearings, counting steps, watching the sun’s position, checking their shadows. Each man swore, silently that if they pushed far enough they would eventually walk out of it. They’d break free.
They pressed on for hours. The dunes gave way at last to scattered rock outcroppings and jagged formations that broke the monotony of the sand. The kind of terrain that could make sound turn and twist.
Then salvation. The thudding chop of rotors broke across the dunes, faint but unmistakable. The thrum of helicopters rolling across the desert air. Both men froze, eyes darting upward.
“Birds! You hear that?” He barked a laugh. “Rescue!”
Cole’s heart kicked hard against his ribs. The sound bounced in echoes, slipping from dune to dune, hard to pin down. Still, they ran, boots pounding sand, legs burning as they scrambled up a rise toward the sky.
They crested the dune, rifles waving high but the horizon was empty. Only sand, shimmering and endless. The sound faded into nothing, leaving behind a hollow silence. A desert silence. Then, faint and cruel, laughter rode on the air. Low. Mocking. Unmistakable. Worming into their bones. The Djinn.
Cole’s hands clenched around his rifle, his teeth grinding as he searched the empty horizon. Keller cursed under his breath, slamming a fist against his helmet. But there was nothing, only desert staring back.
They kept walking. Hours bled together, sun clawing at their necks. Exhaustion dragging on their limbs. A sudden blast of wind ripped through the dunes, sand whipped up into a wall that swallowed them whole. They shielded their faces, coughing, blinded. Then just as quick as it appeared the wind vanished and the storm fell away.
In the distance, the palms waited. The same crooked tree over the water, the same cluster of date tree trunks.
The laughter followed again, faint and sarcastic, curling around the heat.
Neither man wanted to go back. Everything in them screamed against it. But their lips were cracked, their canteens long emptied, their throats raw with thirst.
Keller broke first, shoulders slumping. “We don’t have a choice.” He rasped. Both men had been beaten from the desert, the heat, the sun. They both felt defeated as they reluctantly headed back toward food and water.
Cole said nothing, he knew Keller was right. It was either the accursed oasis or dying of thirst. They needed that water.
CHAPTER 6
The Feast
Cole woke first, the desert air sharp in his lungs. For a moment he thought he was dreaming. The scent that drifted into his nose was not the dry bitterness of sand or the stagnant odor of his own body. It was rich. It was savory. It was food. He sat up fast, his hand closing over his rifle and blinked hard at the sight sprawled before him.
The oasis had transformed. Where bare dirt had been the night before, carpets now stretched wide. Their woven colors seemed to bleed into the sand. Brass trays gleamed in the morning light, heaped with roasted lamb glistening in its own fat. Rice steaming with vegetables and baskets of bread piled high. Bowls brimmed with pomegranates split wide open, their ruby seeds gleaming wetly. Pitchers of water stood beaded with cool condensation. Steam and smoke curled playfully above it all, carrying scents that clawed at their bellies with primal urgency.
Keller stirred beside him and froze when he saw it. For half a heartbeat the two men stared, disbelief paralyzing them, until hunger made the decision for them both. Keller dropped his rifle and scrambled for the nearest tray. He tore into the bread with shaking hands, shoving half a loaf in his mouth and groaning when the warmth hit his tastebuds. Grease from the lamb streaked his chin as he clawed at the meat, swallowing chunks too fast to even chew. He laughed then, a broken, desperate sound that cracked into something close to madness.
Cole hesitated. Suspicion gnawed at the edges of his mind but the smell was unbearable. His stomach felt like it had eaten itself hollow. The sight of Keller devouring without consequence was just too much. He snatched a piece of bread, still warm and bit deep. For the first time since the explosion, the endless taste of dust and bile was gone. He took another bite. Then another. He tore meat from the bone, salt and spice flooded his mouth, filling the emptiness that had been gnawing at him for days. For a few minutes, the desert disappeared. They were just men, sitting around a meal.
Then Keller gagged.
He bent forward, hacking. He spat a spray of grey dust onto the carpet. His hands clawed at his mouth as if trying to drag the taste out of his throat. Cole froze with half a bite between his teeth. The flavor curdled, turning bitter, dry. Ash. He tried to swallow but his throat met nothing but grit. The bread in his hands collapsed to powder, sliding through his fingers. He spat violently, coughing, tasting nothing but soot.
All around them the feast began to rot. The lamb’s glistening blackened, skin curling and cracking, bones crumbling to cinders. The fruit sagged, spilling black juice that hissed and steamed as it touched the air. Even the carpets blackened and smoldered, threads curling like burnt hair. The stench was unbearable, a mix of smoke and rot. The pitchers burst, not into water but into more ash, pouring over the trays in a grey tide.
From the smoke and ruin, it came.
The Djinn rose tall at the edge of the collapsed feast, half shrouded in shifting smoke that curled upward where its legs should have been. Its skin glowed faintly, a molten bronze with cracked skin and glowing seams. The air around it wavered with heat, as though the desert itself was bending to its will. Its mouth was curled into a smile that now showed teeth like shards of black obsidian. Its eyes pressed into them, coals pressed into deep sockets but alive with an ancient and endless fire. It watched them with the lazy satisfaction of a predator that already knew the outcome of the hunt.
It laughed, a sound that shook the sand beneath them, a sound too big for the grove. The ash stirred with the force of it, swirling in clouds that clung to Keller and Cole’s sweat slick skin.
“Do you see?” The Djinn’s voice rolled deep and sonorous. It carried a slight accent but was clear in the cruelty and sarcasm. “I can give you what you hunger for. I can give you what you thirst for. I can give you anything you desire.” Its smile widened, splitting the glow of its cracked skin. Its laugh reverberated in their chest. “All you have to do is ask.”
It let the words linger, then laughed, louder, the sound rolling like thunder across the dunes. Blackened ash drifted on the air. The Djinn dissolved into smoke, vanishing in the ripples of heat left behind. Its laughter echoed long after it was gone.
Cole wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing soot across his cheek. He coughed, spitting black goo into the sand, then looked at Keller. For a long moment neither of them spoke, both of them smeared in ash like firefighters.
Keller broke the silence, his voice raw. “What the fuck was that?” He coughed. “A feast?…A feast? Then?” He gestured to the grey all around them. “All we have to do is ask?” His laugh was brittle, humorless. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Cole shook his head slowly, his eyes were fixed on the ripples of the water glistening in the sun. “It means it wants something. That’s what’s wrong, nothing here is free.”
CHAPTER 7
The Beasts Of Smoke
By midday, the sun was a hammer. It glared down from a blue sky so clear it seemed beautiful, yet the light it cast was wicked. It stripped them of strength with every step they took to gather firewood and dates. Before working each man was sure to rinse the morning’s “feast” out of their mouths and throats. They had drunk their fill but now Cole’s lips were split and raw. His tongue was a swollen knot in his throat. Thirst drove him to the pond although unease churned in his gut. Keller crouched first, scooping water with both hands, letting it spill down his chin.
The relief lasted only seconds. The water thickened as it touched his tongue, growing slick and slimy. He spat violently, gagging. What splashed from his mouth was no longer clear but black with streaks of red as if the pond had turned to bile and blood. Cole tried as well, desperate, cupping handfuls into his mouth. The taste was worse than thirst, rancid, metallic, slick with something that wriggled before dissolving into nothing. He bent double, coughing until his chest hurt. His eyes watered from the stench of it.
From somewhere unseen laughter rolled through the grove. So deep that it shook the palms and stirred the ash that clung to their clothes. It was the Djinn, no doubt, its voice swelled like it came from the desert itself.
“You will beg in the end. They all do.” It rumbled, each word drawn out and thick with promise. “Your mouths are already open.” Its words hung in the air before slowly fading away.
The sun bled into the evening, stretching shadows long across the sand. Keller slumped against a palm, eyes half closed. Sweat streaking his dirt coated face. Cole stayed upright, rifle across his knees, forcing himself to watch the edges of the grove. The silence deepened until every off bark of the fire, every whisper of wind seemed amplified, unnatural. Fatigue and thirst gnawed at both of them but sleep was a luxury neither could risk.
Exhaustion finally smothered the last of their resolve. Neither man could fight it any longer; their heads drooped. Their bodies slackened and for a few precious, fleeting moments they surrendered to sleep.
That was when the smoke began to stir. It curled from the pond as the stars blinked awake. It lifted like mist, slow at first then thickening into coils that moved along the ground with purpose. From it shapes began to lurch forward on crooked legs. At first they looked like wolves, then dogs, then something far less natural. Their bodies rippled as if the Djinn hadn’t decided what form they should wear. When they finally solidified, they were hyenas swollen to monstrous size, shoulders hunched higher than a man’s chest. Their jaws foamed with tusks jutting from mouths already obscenely wide. Their eyes glowed with a sickly ember light, tracking Keller and Cole with a hunger that was almost human.
Then came the laughter. Not the bark of animals, not entirely, but a hideous, broken chorus that warped as it echoed. One moment it was the giggle of a carrion beast, the next it was the mocking tone of a man just out of sight. It filled the oasis, bouncing off the palms and water until the soldiers couldn’t tell if they were surrounded by beasts or the Djinn itself.
Keller yanked his sidearm free, the muzzle flashing in the smoke as she emptied round after round into the creatures. Each shot cracked like thunder in the still night but the hyena monstrosities did not falter. They pushed closer, paws digging through the sand, smoke hissed around their legs as it clung to them like chains.
Cole couldn’t move, his legs refused him. His hands were frozen on his rifle though he never raised it. The stench hit him first. Rot and sulfur. The foul musk of carrion beasts mixed with something molten and metallic, like blood left to bake in the sun. Their breath rolled hot across the two men’s skin. Cole could see the foam stringing between their tusks, dripping black into the sand.
Keller’s magazine clicked empty just as one of the creatures lunged close enough to snap its jaws in the air between them. Then the laughter rose again, shuddering through the oasis and the beasts stopped. Their ember eyes widened, fixed on the men as though waiting for a command. Smoke whirled, swallowing them back into the darkness and in a blink of an eye they were gone.
The Djinn’s voice lingered, that same hideous, sarcastic laughter. It echoed around them until it finally bled away to silence. The silence was too complete, pressing down on them until it felt like a physical weight, smothering every thought. Cole and Keller collapsed where they stood, too drained to speak. Too terrified to close their eyes but too spent to stop themselves. Sleep claimed like a mercy they hadn’t earned.
CHAPTER 8
The First Crack
The desert dawn crept pale and colorless over the horizon, a thin band of bruised light spreading across the dunes. Cole stirred first, his mouth dry, his body sore. Then he saw it, an ornate low table that had not been there the night before, standing impossibly on the sand near their firepit. Upon it sat two tall pitchers of water, beaded with cool condensation and cups of hammered brass that shimmered like coins in the morning sun.
Keller woke with a start, eyes locking onto the pitchers with disbelief that melted into hunger. He scrambled to his feet and reached for one of the cups. Cole lifted a hand as if to stop him, but Keller was already drinking. The sound was obscene in the silence, the heavy gulps of a thirsty man too far gone to care. Water streamed down his chin, soaking his filthy shirt. He didn’t stop until he drained half the pitcher. He pulled away, gasping, and for a heartbeat waited, expecting poison. Rot. Some trick. But nothing happened.
Cole’s restraint crumbled. He filled his own cup and drank. The water was icy, impossibly cold, it burned as it slid down his parched throat. It was the sweetest pain he had ever known. Together they drank until their bellies swelled, the pitchers never running out of water. The cruel dryness of the night had finally eased.
It was then the laughter came, faint at first, like the rustle of wind through leaves. Then it thickened, took shape and the air shimmered over the table. The Djinn emerged, molten veins glowing under skin the color of burnt bronze. His eyes were lit with a cruel fire.
“Drink deep,” he said, his voice low and echoing. “Drink until you think you are safe. It pleases me to see you alive. A corpse cannot beg,” he chuckled softly. “A dead man cannot despair. You will do both before I am done with you.”
Cole’s jaw clenched but he said nothing. He turned his gaze back to the fire, trying to block the creature’s presence with sheer will. Keller, though, could not. His hands trembled as he sat the cup back down. His eyes darted from the Djinn to Cole, as if searching for reassurance and finding none.
The Djinn smiled, teeth like shards of glass. He drifted closer to Keller, circling him like a jackal sizing up its prey. “You’ve thought about it already, haven’t you?” he whispered. “What you might ask for. A way out, maybe? A reprieve? Hmmmmmm?” The Djinn was mocking him. “You tell yourself you are strong, that you will not break. But strength is just a mask worn by those closest to collapse.”
Keller’s breath hitched. His shoulders tightened. He rubbed his temples with dirty fingers trying to get the Djinn out of his mind.
“Stop it.” Cole said, his voice harsh. “Leave him alone.”
The Djinn turned its gaze toward Cole, amusement dancing in his cruel eyes. “But why should I? His fear is sweeter than your silence. He is already cracking.” It moved closer to Cole. “The thirst took the first piece of him. My beasts took another. Now this gift…this kindness…strains him until he doesn’t know whether to thank me or curse me.” It let out a full laugh that vibrated the air as sand whipped around him.
Keller’s eyes glistened in the firelight. He stood suddenly. Standing. Pacing. His movements were jerky and uneven. “He’s lying.” Keller said, more to himself than Cole. “He’s trying to get in our heads. That’s all this is. Just tricks.” He tried to laugh but it came out dry and broken.
The Djinn leaned close to him, its molten breath searing the air. “Tricks? Oh no, little soldier, this is not trickery, I assure you. This is patience. I will peel you apart one comfort at a time. One terror at a time, until you beg me for the very end you fear most.”
Keller flinched, his knees gave out and he collapsed onto the sand. He buried his face in his hands, shuddering.
Cole’s hand hovered near his shoulder but he didn’t touch him. He stared at the Djinn with a hatred of a man who knew he could not fight the thing before him. The Djinn laughed, a sound like breaking glass in the wind, then he was gone. He left the low table and the half drank pitchers. The water would not spoil. Nor vanish. Nor betray them, not yet. Its only cruelty is that it allowed them to live.
CHAPTER 9
Traces In The Sand
The desert slept with them, quiet and suffocating. Cole’s eyes fluttered shut despite the heat and the ache in his bones. For a few precious moments he was home. He could smell it first: the subtle sweetness of his girlfriend’s hair, the sharp tang of breakfast being made and a comforting warmth of a kitchen he had not seen in months. He could feel the creak of the floorboards beneath his bare feet, the sun on his back, a world untouched by war.
And then it soured.
The scents curdled into smoke and ash. The kitchen warped, walls bending like melted wax. Voices he recognized, his mother calling his name, laughter, became guttural rippling through the air. Somewhere, the faint crackle of the oasis fire blended with a voice he had not heard since the night before. Soft. Cruel and almost amused. He tried to move, to wake himself, but the sand pressed heavy against him even in his dream.
Keller had succumbed to exhaustion in his own way. He hadn’t closed his eyes willingly but the body gives in where the mind resists. His mutters grew louder as he drifted, whispering names, half pleas, half accusations, fingers twitching in the sand. “…I can’t…not them…not him…I…can’t…” His head lolled to the side, his lips moving to words that only he could hear.
By the time the sun had burned high enough to turn the dunes gold, Cole woke fully. His lips were split from the arid wind and his throat was on fire. Then he noticed it. The sand around their fire was marked. Prints. Two sets of American combat boots, not his, not Keller’s, circling the fire with a precision that made his stomach twist and turn.
One set dragged slightly, stained with something dark that crusted the sand. The pattern faltered in places, jerky, limping forward and backward. Cole recognized it instantly. It was Diaz.
The other set was impossibly perfect, every tread crisp, uniform, unbroken as though they hadn’t been done by walking at all. They looked placed in the sand. Each one identical to the next, as if some unseen hand pressed them into the sand. There was no drag, no depth, no sign of weight, only the shapes.
Cole’s heart thumped painfully in his chest, “…Keller…” he whispered.
Keller stirred, his cracked eyes opening. The moment he saw the print, his expression hardened, not in fear but something colder. “They came back,” he said quietly, more to himself than Cole. His voice was dry, flat, stripped of disbelief He crouched beside the marks, studying them like evidence. “They both came back.” He looked at Cole. “Both of them.”
He didn’t tremble, he didn’t shout. He only stared. Something behind his eyes had shifted, now steadily unraveling one thread at a time.
A faint hiss rose through the air. The wind shifted, became frigid and crawled across the dunes. It gathered strength quickly, swirling the sand until the tracks began to blur. Cole tried to shield his eyes but the grit stung his face and choked at his throat.
Within seconds, the prints were gone. The blood, the drag, the impossible perfect treads, all erased as though they never existed. The desert returned to its indifferent silence, pale and blank under the raging sun.
Then it came, the laughter. Distant, curling through the air, so faint that it could have been the fading wind. But they knew that sound and it wasn’t human. Keller turned toward the dunes, outside of the oasis, scanning the empty horizon. “He’s still here. He is always here…We need to get the fuck out of here.” No emotion, just certainty.
Cole didn’t answer. The wind died as quickly as it came and the silence that followed was worse than the laughter.
CHAPTER 10
The Sign
The silence of the dawn was unbearable. It pressed on their ears like pressure beneath deep water, so complete it seemed to hum. No insects. No birds. Not even the low moan of shifting dunes. Just the crackle of the fire and the breath of two men still alive because something wants them that way.
The air had returned to the heavy oppressive heat, the sun was barely up and already the Djinn had picked away at their sanity. Cole rubbed at his face, sand grinding against his skin. His tongue felt like burlap. Their water pitchers were still there, half-empty and they drank from them steadily. But it was only enough to keep their bodies from giving out, never enough to truly quench the relentless thirst gnawing at their insides. The pond shimmered in the morning light but it felt like a false promise that neither man trusted anymore.
Then somewhere inside Cole’s pack, a faint hiss broke the silence.
Both men froze. Keller’s head snapped toward the sound and for a moment they just listened. Too afraid to believe it, they waited. The hiss came again. Static. Unmistakable. Cole tore open his pack, shoving aside equipment, the torn map and a canteen with nothing in it. The battled field radio tumbled out, its indicator light shining bright green.
“Jesus Christ.” Keller breathed, already reaching for it. “It still works.”
Cole stared at it in disbelief. “That thing was fried in the blast.” He looked back at Keller. “I don’t even remember grabbing it.”
But Keller didn’t hear him. He twisted at the dials, trying to coax the static into tuning. For a moment it was just wind, the faint pop of interference. Then – “Echo Unit, this is Command. We have your signal. Hold position. I repeat, hold position. We’re coming for you. Copy? Over.”
The words hit like morphine. Keller’s hand trembled as he pressed the button. “This is Echo One-Niner! Copy that! Command, copy that loud and clear! Two survivors requesting immediate extraction! Coordinates incoming!” His voice cracked as he rattled off their location, he was shaking but his voice was soldier steady. “We’re at an oasis. Natural spring. Multiple palms. Do you copy? Over.”
Static filled the air and then the exact same message came back. “Echo Unit, this is Command. We have your signal. Hold position. I repeat, hold position. We’re coming for you. Copy? Over.”
Cole frowned, his pulse hammered in his ears. “That’s the same message. Sarge, it’s the same message.”
“They heard us!” Keller snapped back, messing with the dials. “It’s bouncing off these goddamn dunes. That’s all. Just some signal lag, is all.”
But as Keller spoke, the same voice repeated the message again. Same pauses, same tone, even the faint pop of interference at the same spot. Cole’s stomach dropped. “It’s looping.” He put his head down and sighed loudly. “It’s not real, Keller.”
Keller turned on him, eyes burning. “Don’t say that!
The static warped. It deepened, became wet somehow, like breath pushed through water. Then through the crackle a new voice came through. It was slow, measured and wrong.
“Keller.”
The sound was familiar. Intimate. Keller froze and stared at the radio. “Keller.” The voice said again, deeper this time. “We have your coordinates.”
Cole took a step back. “That’s you. That’s your voice, Keller. What the fuck is going on, Sarge?”
Keller’s jaw locked. “No! It’s Command!” He said. “It’s Command.” He whispered again, quieter though, as if trying to convince himself and make it true. But the radio light dimmed and the next sound that came was laughter. Something deeper and smooth, echoing in the static. It slithered through the speaker, spilling into the air until it felt like the dunes themselves were laughing.
The palms swayed in the wind, though there was none. The water rippled and then darkened as something passed over it. Then Cole felt it, that feeling of being watched. It felt like invisible eyes were pressing into his skin.
The laughter changed. It became a chorus, soft and layered, as if the voices of their fallen comrades were inside. Peters, the gunner who was splattered in the accident and Diaz who had bled out on the trek. Their voices tangled in the air, whispering half-orders, half-prayers, all dissolving into static.
Keller looked down at the radio, face blank. The echoing laughter finally subsided into a whisper and the Djinn’s voice came pouring out, smooth as oil, mocking in its calmness. “You asked for a sign.” It said and laughed. “So I gave you one.”
The light on the radio blinked twice and then went out. The silence that followed was worse than the laughter.
CHAPTER 11
Lost Salvation
The oasis was silent except for the hum of the wind through the palms. The air shimmered, molten with heat, the sun felt like it hadn’t moved in days. Keller sat staring across the dunes, eyes rimmed red and dry, the faint reflection of the pool danced in his eyes. The water in the pitchers stood half-full beside them, just enough to keep them alive but never enough to quench their thirst.
He squinted at the horizon. For a moment, he thought he saw something glint, a shape breaking through the ripple of the sun. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, thinking it was just another mirage. But this one remained.
Trucks.
A convoy, trucks heavy with sand and movement. They rumbled in the distance, shimmering in the desert heat. He could hear the engines and feel the vibration of sand beneath his boots. Keller stood, shading his eyes, staring until his heart hammered in his throat. Then he froze.
The men riding in the backs of the trucks weren’t right.
Diaz was there, what was left of him. His skin looked baked to leather, pulling tight across his bones like old parchment. His lips were black, cracked open in wide seams that oozed sand instead of blood. His eyes were shriveled, black, dark pits that somehow glared with accusation. When he spoke, it came out dry and broken, like wind moaning through dead reeds.
“You left me…” Diaz rasped. “You didn’t even try to bring me home…”
Keller stumbled back a step, his pulse hammering in his ears. “You were gone…we couldn’t…”
Another figure shifted beside Diaz. The gunner. Or a mockery of him that the Djinn had dredged from the sand. His body looked pierced together with a wreckage of flesh. His torso was flattened, ribs twisted outward and grinding as he moved. Each breath a grotesque flex of bones that didn’t belong together. The top half of his head was missing, his jaws worked loosely then tendons would snap shut like old wire as he spoke. The seams across his chest quivered and bled sand and dark fluid that steamed in the sunlight.
“You didn’t come back for me, Sarge.” His voice was wet and thick, bubbling up from somewhere deep inside of him. “Left me to rot…left me in pieces.”
Keller’s mouth went dry. The gunner reached down with one twisted hand, pushing a flap of torn flesh back into place, as if to hold himself together. His other hand lifted in a twisted parody of a salute. His fingers were bent the wrong way, bones jutting through the skin like ivory splinters.
Keller screamed and staggered back. “…no, no, no…”
Cole moved toward him. “Keller! There’s nothing there.”
Keller spun around, eyes wide. “You don’t see them?”
Cole didn’t answer. He didn’t see troops. The air behind Keller warped violently, bending light into shapes that shouldn’t exist. Something rose from the dunes, a many limbed mass crawling through the heat haze, its surface rippling like melted glass. The shape coalesced for a moment into something monstrous, its mouth stretching too wide. Its eyes were hollow and bright.
Keller staggered backward, shaking his head, whispering under his breath, “no, no, no…” over and over. The sound of the engine died. The trucks wavered and then bled into the air, dissolving like smoke on the wind.
“Keller!” Cole’s voice cut through the haze.
Keller turned. Cole was standing by the pond, rifle raised, staring toward the dunes. His face was ashen, eyes wide between horror and awe. “You see that?’ He whispered.
Keller followed his gaze. For an instant, a massive shape crawled from the shifting light. It looked like a man, then not. The figure was too tall, too wide, its limbs bending in odd angles. Its skin crawled like something alive was writhing beneath it. It screamed in a twisted combination of the two men’s voices, like a choir with no melody.
Cole screamed and ran, stumbling back toward the trees. Keller spun around, the dunes now empty, the shape, the soldiers – gone. The air stilled, the horizon flat again. The sound of the scream echoed, then faded into heavy silence.
Keller dropped to his knees, the world bending under the weight of the heat. He didn’t know how long he stayed there, watching the sand twist and shimmer. The sun hadn’t moved. It just hung there in a sky that was way too blue to be real.
Cole was laying in the shade, breathing hard, his eyes were glassy and unfocused. Neither of them spoke. The silence in the desert is complete, total, suffocating, like a held breath.
Keller finally let go, his body collapsing beside the dying embers of their fire. His last thought before the darkness took him was that maybe, just maybe, they were already dead. The Djinn was only keeping them alive to watch them break.
CHAPTER 12
The Wish
The sun was finally setting.
How many days had vanished under its relentless glare, neither man could say. The heat had warped time, stretching every hour into a lifetime. The sky refused to change, no dusk, no dawn, only that blinding white inferno that never moved from its place above the dunes. When the light began to dim, it didn’t bring comfort, only confusion.
Keller stared toward the horizon, watching the sun sink at last, slow and deliberate, its edges bleeding red into the dunes. “You seein’ this?” He murmured, his voice rough with disbelief.
Cole didn’t answer right away. His hands trembled over the fire they had built, though it gave off no warmth. They hadn’t dared make one before, the air had been too hot to breathe, let alone burn. Yet now, with the sun finally dying before them, the flames seemed to whisper, beckoning them closer.
“It’s about damn time the sun finally sets,” Cole murmured. But even he didn’t sound convinced.
The air had turned almost merciful. The heat still clung gently to the sand but the breath of the night was cool enough to trick their bodies into relaxing. They sat by the low fire, the flames licking lazily at the dry twigs Keller had gathered earlier. The quiet was strange, almost wrong. There was no laughter in the wind, no whispers in the trees, just the crackle of the fire and the faint chime of their empty canteens tapping against their propped up rifles nearby.
Cole had leaned against a small dune he created, his eyes half closed. His lips moved in silence, mouthing something Keller couldn’t hear. A prayer maybe, or maybe a name. Within minutes he was asleep, his face soft in the glow of the fire. Keller envied him for it. He hadn’t slept in what felt like days, afraid of what lay behind his eyelids.
But the fire’s warmth, the refreshing cool breeze and the rhythm of his own heartbeat lulled him to sleep. His head drooped, his body betrayed him. For the first time since the desert had swallowed them, Sergeant Michael Keller slept.
When he opened his eyes again, the fire was nearly dead, only a faint orange pulse beneath the ash. The air was still, unnaturally so, even for the desert. Across from him, in Cole’s place, something crouched.
The shape was wrong. The longer he stared, the more his mind recoiled from it. It had a man’s outline but its edges were blurred, like heat shimmer turned solid. It smiled and the firelight trembled.
“You lasted longer than I thought,” the voice said. It wasn’t spoken aloud, it filled Keller’s head with the hiss of burning paper. “The others cried sooner.”
Keller’s mouth went dry. “Where’s Cole?”
“Dreaming,” the Djinn purred. “He’s safer than you are.”
The creature shifted, its outline tightened into something resembling a human. A face began to form out of the dust and smoke. Eyes like dying coals stared at him.”You’re stubborn, Keller. I can admire that but you are breaking. Your bones ache. Your tongue swells. You think about water…food…rest…all the things you’ll never have again.”
Keller glared at the Djinn. “You’re wasting your time.”
“I have eternity,” mocking him. “Wasting it is my favorite pastime.”
It leaned closer, the fire reflecting its teeth, if they could be called that. “You want to survive?” It paused, “…hhhhmmmm?” It chuckled. “You’ve always wanted that. You came here to make sure your men didn’t die for nothing. That’s what eats at you. That’s what keeps you breathing.”
Keller said nothing. The Djinn smiled wider.
“I can give you what you crave. Strength that will not fade. Skin that will not tear. You will be able to endure the sun, the wind and fire. Nothing will end you.”
Keller’s hands balled into fists. “And what will it cost me?”
The Djinn’s laugh was low, intimate. “You already paid. You just don’t remember when.”
Something deep inside Keller cracked, the exhaustion, the guilt, the sun’s unrelenting cruelty. The words left him before he could think. “Fine. I want to live. I wish to survive.”
The Djinn’s eyes gleamed and the desert around them seemed to exhale. “Granted.”
The fire flared violently, casting long shadows across the oasis. Keller gasped in pain as it rippled through him. His skin tightened, black veins spidered across his arm and neck. His heart beat thundered until it felt like it would shatter in his ribs. The smell of scorched flesh filled the air. He tried to scream but his throat locked.
His blood thickened, turning sluggish and dark. Beneath his skin, something moved, his muscles writhing as if alive. He was healing faster than he tore. His vision blurred and then sharpened painfully; every grain of sand shone like glass under the faint moonlight.
The Djinn watched, head tilted, savoring his agony. “Endurance, Keller. You’ll never hunger. You’ll never thirst. You’ll never sleep again. You’ll endure everything…forever. You’ll outlast even the desert.”
When it was over, Keller fell forward on the sand, gasping. His hand shook, coated in blood that wouldn’t dry. The pain lingered, smoldering in every nerve.
The Djinn’s form began to fade, its voice slithered through the night air.
“You asked to survive. Now you will. Long after the world forgets who you are.”
Then it was gone.
Keller lay there for hours, or maybe minutes listening to the fire die. His heart still hammered in his chest. He didn’t notice at first that it didn’t hurt to breathe. His broken ribs from the explosion began to heal and his flesh wounds began to heal.
CHAPTER 13
Dawn
The night held its breath. Cole stirred by the fire, rubbing his eyes as if waking from a heavy dream. The flames had gone out, reduced to a pale, pulsing glow that made the shadows writhe across the sand.
“…Keller?” His voice cracked, raw and uncertain. “You awake?”
There was movement near the water’s edge. Slow. Deliberate.
Cole reached for his rifle, his heart hammering in his chest.
Keller turned.
For a moment, Cole didn’t understand what he was seeing. His brain refused to piece it together. The shape was right but the details were all wrong, horribly wrong. Keller’s skin shone like glass held over flame, parts of it translucent where the muscles twitched underneath. His eyes glowed faintly red, like coals sitting in ash. The veins that had once pulsed blue crawled black and raised under his flesh, pulsing with something thick and molten.
He crouched by the water’s edge, swaying gently. When he moved his joints cracked wetly, the sound of something meaty being pulled over stone. His breath steamed, even in the night air and where it touched the sand, it hissed and smoked.
“Keller,” Cole whispered, his voice trembling. “Jesus Christ…what happened to you?”
Keller tried to speak but the sound that came out was not human. It was a grinding rasp, a voice breaking through broken glass. His lips moved, forming words that didn’t match the sound.
“Survive.” Keller croaked, his tongue blackened and blistered. “He kept his promise.”
Cole took a step back, raising his rifle. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Keller fully stood, the last of the firelight gleaming across his face, well, what was left of it. The skin had split around his cheekbones, revealing dark muscles that flexed when he spoke. The heat that drifted off of him was tangible, shimmering in the air.
“Cole.” He said and when he smiled, the skin of his jaw cracked and bled molten light. “You’ll see. You’ll see that he’s real.”
Cole screamed and fired. The shot echoed through the dunes, a single brutal crack in the suffocating silence. The bullet hit Keller square in the chest. He jerked backward and then looked down. The wound smoked, sizzled and healed before Cole’s eyes.
Keller looked down, tilted his head, almost curious. “Well, that’s interesting. You can’t kill me.”
Cole fired again and again, the muzzle flash blinding in the dark. The shots slammed into Keller’s body with wet, meaty thuds. Every hole was sealed, every wound spat fire and healed over.
When the rifle clicked empty, Cole dropped it and ran.
He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. He tore through the dunes, the cold air slicing through his throat. Behind him there was no sound. No pursuit, only the echo of that dry, warped voice whispering from the dark: Survive.
Cole stumbled, gasping, until his knees hit the sand. The wind had changed direction, a whisper at first, then a cruel, low laugh threading through it. He turned toward the sound, his breath hitching.
There, rising from the dune, the Djinn.
It stood in the moonlight like a mirage made of smoke and hate, its form was constantly shifting. One second a man, the next something monstrous. Half man. Half shadow. The laughter that poured from it was not loud, but it filled the air around Cole until it was the only thing left.
The Djinn smiled, crouching to meet his eyes. Its grin was impossibly wide, stretching across its face until it nearly split in two.
“Running already?” It asked softly. “But you’ve only begun to play.”
Cole tried to crawl backward, but the sand seemed to hold him in place. No words came from him, only a breathless, strangled sob.
The Djinn leaned close enough for Cole to smell the heat coming off of it. A noxious blend of burnt iron and blood. “You saw what happens when your kind asks,” its voice curled around Cole. “You’ll ask me too, in the end.”
Then it vanished in a burst of sand and laughter, leaving Cole alone and trembling. The moon burned cold and merciless above him.
CHAPTER 14
The Mercy Of Death
The night broke at last, though Cole couldn’t tell how long it lasted. The sky was pailing at the edges, that strange, fragile hour before dawn when the world holds its breath. The stars hung low and silent and the dunes were no longer black but bruised violet, their crests trembling slightly in the wind. Cole stumbled through them, half blind, his mind was a ragged wound. He didn’t know how long he was running, minutes – hours, but his body screamed for rest. His throat was scorched. His tongue was thick and his heart was a hollow hammer in his chest.
Behind him, the oasis was gone, so was Keller, or what he had become. Cole couldn’t bear to see it again but the memory clung to him like oil. The glimmer of flesh that wasn’t flesh anymore, the sound of bone scraping. That awful light that shone under his skin. He’d emptied his magazine into that thing and still it lived. It took his shots as if each one were a blessing.
Now there was only silence. The endless, suffocating silence of the desert.
Cole fell to his knees, sand grinding into his wounds. The horizon wavered before him, distorted with heat even in the cool morning. He thought of water, his home, of the girl he left behind. Her laugh. Her smile. The way her hair smelt and the warm aroma of soap on her skin. It all felt like someone else’s life.
His head dropped forward, “God…” he whispered. The word like breaking glass in his mouth, he swallowed hard. “God, please make it stop.”
The wind shifted. A breath, warm, perfumed with something ancient and electric moved against his ear. “You still pray to Him, little soldier?” The words were as soft and smooth as silk.
Cole froze. “Stay away from me,” he said hoarsely trying to push himself up. His legs had stopped working and wouldn’t hold his weight.
A soft chuckle came from nowhere, everywhere. “You ran from one demon and straight into another.” The laughing grew, the words floated above it. The words were lazy, almost amused. “But I am not cruel without reason. I am simply…bored.” The Djinn sighed deeply.
“You made him a monster.”
“He wished to survive,” the Djinn said. Cole could almost hear the smile in the words. “I gave him survival. You humans never specify the cost.” He laughed heartily, “tsk, tsk.”
Cole wanted to scream but it only came out as a dry, broken laugh, “you call that living?”
The sand before him stirred, rising into a human form. Tall, lean and fluid, made of shifting sand and smoke. The Djinn’s eyes glowed slightly beneath a face that wasn’t a face at all.
“You look tired, Cole,” it whispered. “Would you like to rest?”
He shook his head lazily, panting for breath. “No more tricks.”
“Hhhhmmmmm, no tricks. Only choices.” The voice grew soft, almost tender. “Tell me what it is you want most. I will grant it freely.”
Cole’s chest heaved. “I don’t want anything from you.”
“We both know that’s a lie. You already do.”
The dunes shimmered again and this time the mirage came gently. The memory came bleeding into the world. The smell of coffee and toast, his mother singing softly to the radio, dawn sunlight through the kitchen window. He could hear laughter from the yard, a dog barking, the sound of his girlfriend calling his name.
It shattered him.
Large tears rolled down his face, his voice cracked. “That’s not real.”
“Oh…but it can be,” the Djinn whispered. “All you have to do is ask.”
Cole stared at the wavering illusion. His mother turned, her eyes warm and sad. “Come home, Cole. We miss you.”
He was sobbing before he realized it, his shoulders bouncing with every gasp. His voice was small, trembling. “I just want it to stop.”
“Then wish it.”
He looked up at the Djinn. The first line of dawn had started to spread across the horizon, painting the dunes red. His shadow stretched long behind him, broken and thin.
“I wish for death.” He said.
The Djinn bowed his head, the faintest hint of satisfaction curled around his lips. “Granted. Finally, a wish with clarity.”
Cole dropped his head into his hands. The desert fell silent and the wind stilled. Then the sand began to move around Cole, not violently but with a strange, deliberate grace. It wrapped around Cole’s legs, his waist, his chest, cool and weightless. He gasped but the pain was gone. The fear was gone.
The dunes folded over him slowly and pulled him down until there was nothing left but a slight ripple in the sand. The first full light of morning broke across the horizon, gilding the desert in blood and gold.
The Djinn stood above the place where Cole had vanished. Only a whisper of laughter escaped him like smoke. “Mercy.” It said softly and vanished.
CHAPTER 15
The Desert Within
The desert was finally still. The sun had long since bled away, leaving the oasis left in cool light and shadows that skated across the sand. Keller sat by the remains of the fire, its last ember pulsing like a dying heartbeat. Cole was gone, he knew that much. The Djinn had taken him. Body and soul. What lingered now was nothing but silence.
But silence didn’t mean peace.
It started with the heat. Not from the air or fire but from within. Keller clutched at his chest as if he could tear out whatever was burning him alive on the inside. The flesh on his arms gleamed slick with sweat then began to crack. Thin fissures appeared glowing faintly from beneath, like molten iron carving into clay. The pain was unbearable but the scream caught in his throat sounded wrong, scraped and hollow.
“You wanted to live,” the Djinn whispered. The voice wasn’t behind him or above him, it was inside of him. It slid through his skull like smoke. “And so you shall. What a durable little creature you are.” It smiled too broadly.
Keller slammed his fist into the ground. The sand recoiled, bouncing and rippling like water. “Get out of my head!” He screamed. But his voice was no longer human, it rasped dry and low but edged with something ancient.
“I gave you life,” the Djinn said. “Should have been smart like your friend and asked for death.” It laughed loudly, the sound booming and echoing off the darkened dunes. “Men like you never weigh the costs of such requests, they don’t ponder the questions long enough.” It laughed again, this time it curled around Keller like a blanket.
The heat in Keller’s veins spread to his fingertips. He ran to the pond and feverishly dipped his hands into the water. It steamed and hissed as he touched it. He watched in horror as the skin on his hands began to darken, cracking open to reveal dull red light beneath. He could feel the grains of sand on his skin, not touching him but inside of him. They moved with his blood, whispering as they slid past bone and sinew. When he breathed the air shimmered. When he blinked the world rippled with him.
The Djinn was everywhere now, in the whisper of the palms, in the soft lap of the pond. “You see,” it murmured. “I am not bound. I am the binding. I am the wind, the heat, the water and the hunger that crawls beneath your tongue. I am everything…and now you are part of me.”
Keller tried to stand but the ground seemed to pulse beneath his boots. The reflection in the water wasn’t his own. It was something pale-eyed and cracked, steam rose slightly from his skin. He stumbled back. “No, no, no…I didn’t ask for this.”
“No,” the Djinn whispered. “You wished for this.” Its voice was sharp now, mocking. “You asked for life. You begged for it. Now I’ve made you something that can never die.”
Now came the visions.
He saw his squad again, their faces lit by firelight. Laughing. Smiling. Alive. Their laughter was warm, familiar. For a heartbeat Keller felt safe. Then one of them turned to him. Diaz. When he smiled sand poured from his mouth. The gunner’s arm slipped from its socket, bones gleaming wet and white. The others followed, melting and breaking, their laughter turned into screams that were swallowed by the night.
Keller fell to his knees. “Please, make it stop.”
The Djinn’s tone was almost tender now. “No. Not yet. You will feel what eternity feels like, Sergeant. You will know my boredom. You will know my hunger. You will listen to every voice the desert has ever claimed.”
They came from every direction, faint and unending. Thousands of them murmuring through the sand, like a choir of lost souls. He could feel them under his skin writhing, pressing against his ribs. He tried to scream but the sound was absorbed in the wind. Then they were gone.
The Djinn’s laughter faded, leaving only the shifting sand and the faint hiss of cooling air. Keller’s body trembled. His eyes glowed faintly in the dark, amber and shifting like a reflection of the Djinn itself.
He sat there for hours, maybe days. Time no longer made sense. The desert didn’t move. The stars didn’t shift. Then through the endless silence, Keller heard something new. Voices. Human voices. Far away, their sound slipping over the dunes.
He lifted his head, cracked lips curling into something that maybe once had been a smile.
“Rescue.” He whispered.
The wind stirred and somewhere, unseen, the Djinn’s laughter began to rise again.
CHAPTER 16
The Unbreakable Circle
The voices drifted over the dunes, closer. At first they were faint, like echoes from a half-remembered dream. But as Keller stood, head titled toward the night, the words sharpened slightly. Familiar, broken and strained. Keller couldn’t make out words only sound. The hairs that no longer existed on his arms might have risen if his body still obeyed human instinct.
He stepped forward, sand smoking under the weight of his altered feet. “Hello?” He called out, voice rough and warped. “Over here!”
The voices wavered and then stopped. Keller listened. His heart surged painfully at the sound of boots striking sand. Real weight. Real cadence. Real men. His throat tightened.
After everything, after the torment and the nightmare. After Cole’s death, rescue may actually be coming. He staggered toward the edge of the palm line, desperate to see who was approaching. His voice cracked as he tried to shout again. “We’re here! Over here! Don’t you hear me?” But no sound came from Keller, only the Djinn’s laughter inside of his head.
Something moved beyond the first dune, two silhouettes, trudging through the dark. One limping and one breathing hard. Keller squinted. Something about their shapes struck him, a familiarity too sharp to ignore. But hope clawed through him anyway. Savage and hungry.
The Djinn’s voice unfurled beside him in a molten whisper before he could take a step.
“Stay where you are.”
Keller froze mid stride as pain speared up his legs and into his spine. He dropped to his knees, sand sprayed all around him. Fire burst beneath his skin, cracks widening, light pouring out between them like molten seams. He screamed or tried to, clutching his chest until his breath turned into smoke.
“You wished to endure…” the Djinn murmured, circling unseen. “But you forgot, endurance does not mean freedom. Endurance is permanence.”
Keller tried to crawl forward but his arms seized, locking at the elbows. His fingers spread involuntarily, rooting in the sand like claws. Heat surged down his limbs and into the ground beneath him, fusing him in place. The oasis welcomed him like a body welcomed a new vein.
“No…please. No! Let me go!” Keller gasped but his mouth struggled to shape the words. His jaw stiffened, joints cracking like baked pottery.
“You ran for your life,” the Djinn said. Its voice was a warm breath in his ear. “You will not run again. You belong to my oasis now. You will watch the desert bring them to me. Again and again. For as long as the sand remembers footsteps.”
Keller’s ribs tightened, hardening like ceramic. His legs fused to the ground completely, sensation draining from everything below his waist. He tried to turn his head but he felt resistance, the tendons in his neck stiffening and turning to stone. Panic surged, bright and wild.
“Please…” he rasped, though his lips barely moved.
The Djinn laughed softly, the sound rippled through the palm fronds. “Look up Keller, look well. See who you called to.
Keller forced his neck upward. The two silhouettes crested the dunes at last, stepping into the moonlight. One slumped slightly, dragging a boot in the sand. The other scanned the horizon with wary, exhausted eyes. One carried a rifle. One swore under his breath and pointed to the oasis.
Keller’s heart broke in a silent, shuddering shock.
It was him.
It was them.
Cole and Keller, alive, unbroken. Sunburnt and staggering toward the oasis for the first time.
Every detail with perfect, cruel perfection. Cole’s limp from the explosion. Keller’s pack hanging from a strap, their shadow trembling in the heat-shimmer. The exact moment. The exact night. The exact beginning of their suffering replayed before him like a memory made flesh.
Keller tried to call to them again, tried to warn them, tried to scream. But only a thin exhale escaped his lips.
The Djinn’s voice pressed into his ear, filled with delight.
“The circle never breaks, Keller. The desert opens, they arrive. They thirst. They beg. And you?” It let the words linger a moment, savoring them. “You get to watch.”
Keller’s vision sharpened as his transformation surged, binding him to the earth. He felt the oasis swallow the last of his human warmth.
Below, the newcomers, their past selves, walked into the clearing. Just as they had done before, a straight shot right to the pond.
Behind them, the Djinn laughed, patient and eternal.
And the story began again.