The desert had always been honest with Ira Malhotra.
Cruel, exhausting, endless — but honest.
It told you exactly what it was: heat, dust, thirst, survival.
That was why the city unsettled her.
It did not belong.
She stood still on the narrow dirt road, the strap of her medical bag cutting into her shoulder, pulse ticking loudly in her ears. Behind her stretched the familiar — sand, stones, a sky burning white with afternoon light. Ahead of her rose pale walls and curved towers, untouched by ruin, unclaimed by time.
A city.
Not abandoned.
Waiting.
Her first instinct was to step back.
Her second was stranger.
Recognition.
Her chest tightened as if some long-forgotten part of her had leaned forward.
"This isn't possible," she whispered.
Yet the city did not waver.
No heat shimmer. No illusion.
Stone arched upward in fluid lines, threaded with veins of dark metal that glimmered faintly. Creepers climbed balconies. Pale flowers bloomed where no water should exist. And around it all lay a silence so dense it felt physical.
The name came without permission.
Vayukshi.
Ira's fingers twitched.
She had never heard that word before. And yet it settled into her mind with terrifying ease.
She adjusted her bag and took one step.
The moment she crossed the unseen threshold, the world changed.
The air cooled.
Not pleasantly.
Unnaturally.
The desert sounds vanished — no wind, no insects, no distant life. Only the muted echo of her own breath and a low, almost imperceptible hum that vibrated beneath the stones.
Her heart gave a dull, heavy thud.
Pain surfaced.
Not her own.
Old pain.
Layered pain.
The kind that had no beginning.
She closed her eyes and inhaled carefully, the way she had been trained since childhood.
Not yours, she reminded herself.
Observe. Don't absorb.
When she opened them, the street stretched empty and vast. Tall structures curved inward as if leaning to listen. Windows gaped dark. Doorways waited.
"This place is wrong," she murmured.
The pain deepened in response.
She had lived with foreign emotions all her life — grief that wasn't hers, fear that arrived without reason, sadness that clung without memory. She had learned to filter, to ground, to survive.
But this…
This felt like standing at the edge of an ocean that had never known shore.
A movement flickered ahead.
Ira froze.
A figure stood beneath a vine-covered archway at the far end of the street.
Tall. Still. Watching.
He did not advance.
He did not retreat.
He existed — as if he had always been there.
Her skin prickled. Not fear.
Attention.
She took a cautious step.
The pain surged violently.
Her breath left her lungs in a broken gasp as something immense pressed inward — centuries folding into seconds.
Loneliness without memory.
Duty without rest.
Time without meaning.
Her vision blurred.
"I—" she tried to speak, but the word drowned.
Her knees buckled.
The world tilted.
As she fell forward, her fingers brushed the stranger's wrist.
For a single, impossible instant, everything broke open.
Emotion poured into her — not sharp, not wild, but endless. A silence so complete it roared. An existence so long it had forgotten why it continued.
And then there was nothing.