The Realm

Kyra and Dax walked until the city became a mirage behind them, its towers reduced to glints of light and memory. Wind pressed against their backs, as if urging them not to look over their shoulders again. For days, there was only the horizon, a dune of gold rippled like a held breath. Their shadows stretched long and thin across the dunes, and sometimes, when the wind shifted, Kyra thought she heard the city's laughter carried faintly on the air but it was only sand, whispering against itself.
By the fifth dusk, the land began to change. The dunes sloped downward into a shallow basin where black stone broke through the sand like the ribs of some buried titan. A windless silence lived there, the kind that swallowed sound and gave nothing back.