The Night of Painted Sand

The Chase

A sharp whistling sound broke the muffled silence of the desert night. Naima dropped to the sand just as a glassy projectile screamed past her shoulder, embedding itself into the dune ahead. She recognized it immediately—a shard of black obsidian, too perfect and too fast to be anything but crafted by human hands. They were closer than she thought.

Her heart rampaged in her chest, but she did not panic. She couldn’t afford to. Staying low, she unclasped a knife from her thigh, its blade reflecting the eerie reds of the sky. She shifted sideways through the sand, putting distance between herself and the pursuers while quietly memorizing the pattern of dunes. Each hill was a compass point; each shadow a potential escape.

Naima’s breath evened out as her mind dug into memories, threading through events from only three days prior. This had all started with a strange man in a weathered turban—a pale-skinned foreigner who stumbled into her oasis village with wild eyes and desperate murmurs. He had spoken of forgotten gods and maps of the underworld etched into shards of ancient pottery. Her people had laughed at him, until the first of the storms came—dry lightning that broke the skies apart and made even the elders tremble.

By dawn, the foreigner had vanished, leaving behind only rumors and a single shard of pottery marked with symbols Naima couldn’t begin to decipher. That had been her first mistake: taking the shard to her uncle, the tribe’s shrewd but ambitious historian.

Her second mistake had been trusting she was the only one who knew about it.

A Deal with Mirage

The pursuers were not ordinary men. Naima had seen their faces when they first arrived in her village: pale as the bones of camels left too long in the sun, their garb neither desert wear nor modern uniform but something unsettlingly seamless, as if sewn from shadows. They hadn’t spoken much, but they didn’t need words to convey their hunger for the shard and, by extension, for Naima.

Shoving herself upright, Naima sprinted downhill, the sand licking at her heels. Her satchel slapped against her hip as she moved, but she gripped it close. She could feel the shard through its leather casing—its sharp edges, its unsettling warmth, and the unnatural pull it seemed to exert. Was it cursed? Alive in some way? This was more than history or treasure. This was something old, something angry.

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The wind shifted, carrying with it the sour stench of her pursuers’ breath. They were close enough now that she could hear their guttural mutterings in a tongue that made her bones ache. Naima turned sharply left toward a small plateau of rocks. There, under cover of stone, she hoped to buy herself a moment to think. But as her boots hit packed ground and her legs carried her higher, she faltered.

Someone was waiting atop the plateau—a woman.

Whispers of Time

Naima froze mid-step, her knife raised, but the woman didn’t move. She stood tall and still against the light of the swirling skies. Her hair—if it was hair—flowed in tendrils of silver and blue, blending so seamlessly with her flowing robes that she seemed to bleed into the atmosphere. Her eyes shimmered like glass under too much heat, and when she spoke, her voice seemed borrowed from the wind.

"You carry the shard," said the woman, tilting her head slightly. Her gaze drifted down to the satchel at Naima's side. "Do you know what it sings of?"

"It sings of trouble," Naima replied, her voice sharper than she intended. The knife in her hand didn’t waver. "Speak, or move out of my way."

The woman laughed—not with malice, but mirth, like thunder played backward. "Trouble, yes," she whispered. "But also power. If you carry it onward, you must understand what it is you’re trying to outrun."

Naima hesitated. Behind her, the howls of the pursuers grew louder, their silhouettes darkening the dunes below. The woman stepped forward, her air of calm eerie against the rising dread bubbling in Naima's chest.

"The shard does not belong to this world," the woman continued, her outstretched hand oddly inviting. "You can either return it to its cradle or use it to break every chain it touches. Make your choice, child. Quickly."

Naima felt as though the entire desert held its breath. She glanced back at the looming figures behind her, her grasp tightening on the satchel. The shard pulsed in her mind—inviting her, tempting her, like forbidden fruit she could not unsee. But then she looked at the woman again, and something deep within her chest steadied. Perhaps it was the woman’s certainty, or the universe echoing its own demands.

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With a cry ripped free of fear and defiance, Naima pulled the shard out into the open. The sky above seemed to ripple as she raised it high, its symbols glowing white-hot under the cosmic fire swirling above.

The Shard Awakens

The pursuers screamed—a sound that Naima swore shaved decades off her life with its unnatural pitch. As they surged up the plateau, the shard darted light outward in twisting lines, striking first the sand, then the men. They disintegrated like figures made from burnt paper.

But the light did not stop there. It surged upward, pulling the heavens themselves into a vortex that tore apart the stars. Naima barely managed to shield herself before everything went stark white, and sound ceased to exist.

The Aftermath

When Naima opened her eyes, the skies were calm. The shard lay dull and lifeless in her hand, cold to the touch. The woman in silver was gone, replaced only by a faint whisper that trailed in Naima's ears, urging her to go—forward, always forward.

Naima stood there for a long while before slipping the shard into her satchel and walking on. The desert had claimed its secrets, but Naima? She had become something else altogether.

And the cosmos had only just begun to whisper her name.

Genre: Dark Fantasy/Mystical Adventure

The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: The Joy of Life: How to Start Enjoying It Fully Right NOW

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