The sun was a burning nail hammered into the sky.
Every ray fell like a blade, cutting the skin and choking the breath.
The cart creaked under the weight of its worn planks, pulled by two gaunt, skeletal beasts, their eyes veiled as if staring at something that did not belong to this world.
The boy sat beside Kaelis. Neither of them spoke.
Only the song of the warm wind and the dry sound of footsteps on the windswept sand.
At one point, Kaelis wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"This damn desert," he muttered, spitting dust from his mouth. "You can only cross it on foot, no horse-drawn or camel-drawn caravans"
The boy did not reply.
Something in the still air vibrated.
Not a sound, not yet. More like a shadow searching for space among the suspended grains, a pulse without a heart that already resonated in flesh.
They had been walking nonstop all day, and finally decided to rest, it was almost night
So they decided to stop for a moment to find a spot to sleep, hoping to reach their destination as soon as possible.
But then, it happened.
At first it was only a distant stain, like a distortion of heat.
Then, like thunder that does not strike but swells beneath the skin, the sound arrived.
A rhythm. Broken, obsessive, tribal.
The boy felt his chest vibrate, as if that invisible drum had taken refuge within his bones.
Kaelis stiffened. His eyes narrowed, lips pressed shut.
"No…" he whispered. "It can't be…"
From the ridge of a dune, figures emerged.
Dozens. Hundreds.
Broken bodies, twisted, as if the desert had molded them at its whim. Some were men, others women, others still children — but deformed. Too long, too thin, jaws torn open like mouths never meant to close.
They all walked together, moving in ritual jerks. A living wave following a primordial rhythm.
And they sang.
Or screamed.
It was impossible to tell.
The voice seemed to come from the belly of the earth itself, and in that roar there was a name that none pronounced but all could feel.
The boy recognized it, though he did not know how.
It was the nostalgia for something he had never possessed.
And then he saw him.
Upon a massive elephant, draped in red and yellow veils worn thin by time, he sat.
A man. Or something far older.
He did not move. He did not speak.
He sat still, his face veiled by a cloth that only revealed eyes fixed, incandescent.
His mere gaze was enough to bend the desert.
Kaelis trembled.
"This… is the March," he whispered. "But it cannot be. The kings swore…"
"Swore what?" asked the protagonist.
Kaelis clenched his jaw.
"that he was dead"
The March advanced.
Men and monsters together, in an eternal ritual, following the elephant and its master.
Every step was a heartbeat.
Every scream an echo.
Every gesture an order etched in blood.
The boy listened.
And the more he listened, the more the rhythm consumed him.
The words shattered, became fragments of memory that did not belong to him: cities in flames, delirious crowds, crowns broken.
Then, it happened again.
The eyes of the king on the elephant fell upon him.
And then the sound became clear.
Badabum cha cha.
The sky exploded in red.
The dunes rose like a furious tide.
The cart split apart. The beasts screamed. Kaelis fell, his voice swallowed by the chorus.
The boy was overwhelmed.
Ecstasy. Terror. Memories that were not his own.
He saw the birth of a kingdom and its ruin.
He saw hands burning sacred scrolls.
He saw an entire people kneeling before that man on the elephant.
And then, again, nothing.
The desert was calm.
The sky clear.
No trace of the March.
Kaelis was on his knees, mute, his face ashen.
"You… you know what it was?" he asked, his voice broken.
The boy stared at the horizon.
His heart still beat to the forbidden rhythm.
"No," he said softly. "But something inside me does."
Kaelis rose, his legs trembling.
"Of course."
He came bavk to himself
"The other kings… the citizens begged them to tell. But they said nothing. Never. Only once, an old minstrel spoke of an ancient ritual, a procession that crossed the deserts to keep a fire alive. He said that whoever drew too close… changed."
The boy lowered his gaze to his hand. It was trembling.
Not with fear.
With something deeper.
"Perhaps we were not meant to see it," he said.
Kaelis nodded slowly.
"Perhaps not."
They resumed their march.
The desert embraced them in its silence.
But in the ears of the protagonist, like a seed that would not die, a distant echo remained.
A beat.
A ritual.
A badabum cha cha.