Azra woke with a start, the echoes of the figure's unblinking gaze still fresh in her mind. She had not remembered falling asleep, but exhaustion from the journey had likely overwhelmed her as she sat huddled in the corner of the ancient temple. The cold stone beneath her was a harsh reminder that she was far from safety.
She rubbed her eyes, still groggy, and reached for her father's journal, which had fallen by her side. The pages were brittle, the ink fading in places, but the words within were still legible. Azra had pored over them countless times, trying to make sense of the mad ramblings toward the end. Her father had been obsessed—possessed, even—by his quest for knowledge about the supernatural, and it had ultimately consumed him.
She flipped to a page near the back, the one she had marked just days before her journey. Her father had written about Al'Khari in fragmented, desperate sentences, as though something had been chasing him even as he wrote:
"The city is not what it seems. The spirits are restless. The curse… it runs deeper than even I could have imagined. Something ancient lingers here, something that should never have been unearthed. I feel it watching me. I cannot stay much longer."
His last entry was more cryptic: "The answer lies beneath. Beneath the sands, beneath the stone. It is watching, waiting… Beware the veil."
The "veil." That word had been repeated again and again throughout his journal, and now, after last night's encounter, Azra couldn't shake the feeling that she was beginning to understand what it meant. There was something in Al'Khari, something that had stayed hidden beneath the sands for centuries, waiting for the right moment to rise again.
She ran her fingers over the rough surface of the journal, her thoughts drifting to her father. His disappearance had never been solved, and though everyone assumed he was dead, Azra had always believed there was more to his fate. He had been searching for something—an artifact, perhaps, or a clue about the supernatural world that he had spent his life chasing.
Her mother had warned her against following in his footsteps. "Your father was lost to those shadows, Azra. Don't let them take you too," she had said.
But here she was, standing at the edge of the very world her father had become so consumed by. And after what she had seen last night, Azra knew there was no turning back. She had to know the truth, not just about her father, but about the darkness that clung to this forsaken place.
She stood, her legs stiff and sore, and made her way out of the temple. The sun had risen, but its weak light did little to warm the eerie silence that still hung over the city. The air felt thick, heavy with a presence she couldn't see but could feel lingering at the edge of her senses.
Azra moved cautiously through the crumbling streets, her eyes scanning the surroundings for any sign of life. But the city remained deathly still, as though it had been abandoned for centuries. She followed the path she had taken the night before, her destination clear in her mind: an ancient library her father had written about, hidden deep within the heart of Al'Khari.
According to his journal, the library was where the city's most guarded secrets had been kept. It was said to hold tomes of ancient knowledge—records of curses, rituals, and forgotten lore. Her father had believed it was the key to unlocking the mysteries of the city.
It wasn't long before she found it—a grand, imposing structure that had somehow survived the ravages of time better than the buildings around it. The doors, massive and intricately carved with symbols she didn't recognize, were slightly ajar, as if waiting for her.
She hesitated for a moment, her hand hovering just above the door's surface. The symbols, strange and unfamiliar, seemed to pulse with a life of their own. They reminded her of the drawings her father had sketched in the margins of his journal—symbols he had copied from some ancient source he had never fully explained. They were intricate and unsettling, spirals and jagged lines interwoven like the threads of a web, each one seeming to draw the eye deeper into its center.
Azra took a deep breath and pushed the door open. It groaned in protest, the sound echoing unnaturally in the silence. Inside, the library was dark, the air thick with the scent of dust and decay. Rows of shelves, filled with crumbling scrolls and faded tomes, stretched into the shadows, some toppling over, others consumed by the sands that had seeped in through cracks in the stone.
She stepped cautiously into the room, her footsteps muffled by the thick layer of dust that coated the floor. Her fingers trailed along the edge of a shelf, brushing over the worn spines of ancient books. This place felt like it hadn't been disturbed for centuries, and yet, there was an undeniable sense of presence here, as though the knowledge within these walls was not dead, merely sleeping—waiting to be uncovered.
The faintest whisper of wind stirred behind her, but when Azra turned, nothing was there. She shook her head, trying to focus on the task at hand. The answers she sought were here, buried among the pages of forgotten texts. Her father had believed the library contained information about the veil—the barrier between the living and the dead, the natural and the supernatural. And if he was right, it could be the key to understanding what was happening in Al'Khari.
Azra moved deeper into the library, her eyes scanning the rows of scrolls and books. She had no idea where to begin, but her instincts guided her to the farthest corner of the room, where a single, dust-covered pedestal stood beneath a stained-glass window. The light filtering through the window cast strange, fractured patterns on the floor, giving the room an otherworldly glow.
Upon the pedestal rested a book, larger and more ornate than the others. Its cover was bound in cracked, dark leather, and the symbols etched into its surface glimmered faintly in the dim light. Unlike the other books, this one seemed untouched by time, as though it had been placed here for her to find.
Azra reached for it, her heart pounding in her chest. Her fingers hovered above the cover, hesitating for a moment. There was a feeling in the pit of her stomach, a sense that once she opened this book, there would be no turning back. But she had come too far to stop now.
She opened the book, the pages brittle yet surprisingly intact. The writing inside was in a script she didn't recognize—an ancient, curling language that her father had referenced in his notes. But as she turned the pages, something else caught her eye: drawings, similar to the symbols outside the library, and then… a map.
Her breath caught. It was a map of Al'Khari, but not as it was now. This was a map of the city as it had been in its prime, before the sand had swallowed half of it. There were places marked that she had never seen, structures buried deep beneath the desert—perhaps this was what her father had been searching for.
As her eyes traced the map, she noticed something chilling. There, in the heart of the city, was a drawing of the very temple she had visited the night before. But below it, beneath the temple's foundations, was another structure—hidden, buried deep beneath the sands. It was marked only by a single symbol: the same unblinking eye she had seen in her father's journal.
Her father's last cryptic message echoed in her mind: "The answer lies beneath… beneath the sands, beneath the stone. It is watching, waiting… Beware the veil."
Suddenly, the air in the room shifted, growing colder, and the light from the stained glass seemed to dim. Azra felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She was no longer alone.
Slowly, she turned, her eyes scanning the darkened library. In the far corner of the room, the shadows seemed to shift, coalescing into a form. At first, it was barely noticeable, a vague shape, but as Azra stared, it began to take on a more definite outline—a tall, cloaked figure standing in the shadows.
Her heart raced as the figure stepped forward, its movements slow and deliberate. The hood obscured its face, but she knew. She could feel it.
The eyes. They were watching her.
Azra stumbled back, the book slipping from her hands and falling to the floor with a dull thud. The figure moved closer, gliding across the floor as if it weren't bound by the rules of the physical world.
For a brief moment, she considered running, but something held her in place. Fear, yes, but also something else. A strange, unexplainable pull, as though this figure had something to show her, something she needed to see.
The figure stopped a few feet from her, its presence overwhelming. The air around it seemed to distort, growing darker, colder. Azra felt her breath catch in her throat.
Then, slowly, the figure raised a hand, its long, bony fingers extending from beneath the cloak. It pointed to the book, still lying open on the floor. Azra hesitated for a moment, then knelt down and picked it up, her hands trembling.
The page had turned to a new illustration—one that hadn't been there before. It showed a figure, cloaked in shadow, standing before a door buried beneath the sands. The door was sealed, but from within, something was pressing against it, trying to escape.
And beneath the image, written in her father's handwriting, were the words: "Beware the ones who wait in the shadows. The veil is thin here, and the forgotten are waking."
Azra's heart pounded in her chest as she looked up, but the figure was gone.