Seven years. Seven years since the desert swallowed everything she once knew. Time had moved on-as it always does-slipping through her fingers like sand in an hourglass. Cities changed. People changed. She didn't. Ashley still found herself standing in that same moment- that same breath- where everything had fallen apart. Ardeth was gone. Not just gone in the way people leave, or drift, or fade into memory. Gone in the way that leaves a silence behind. A space that never quite fills again. The world had continued without him. But Ashley... hadn't quite learned how to. Seven years hadn't dulled the pain. If anything- It had sharpened it. Because grief doesn't disappear. It settles. It lingers. It waits. And sometimes... it whispers. But the desert remembers. And the past? The past never stays buried for long. Something was shifting. Something ancient. Something restless. And whether she was ready or not- The sands were stirring again.
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