The next day, I went to see Zimar and Irem in their tent. Their fever had gone down, and the girls had got better after rest. Zimar threw her arms around me in a hug, and told me that they feared the worst after seeing me half-buried in the desert. Sean called it a sheer luck, else I would’ve been dead if Okba and Karim had found me a minute later.

“How are you now?” I asked Irem, but the girl didn’t respond to me at first. She was watching something on her tab, and asked me to come closer.

“There’s something that you need to see.” She told me. I looked at Sean and Zimar for an explanation, but the siblings were also clueless and shrugged back in answer. I walked closer to Irem, and looked at the screen.

She played a video for us to see. It’s the recording of the storm on her camcorder. The wind had blasted her back, and the camera got knocked out of her hand, falling sideways on the ground, however, the camera was still intact to continue recording the scene.

It’s then the her camera captured moving shadows in the sandstorm crossing the desert.

I  was taken aback in surprise. I looked at Irem’s face whose eyes were fixed on the screen.

“What is this?” Zimar pointed at the screen. The video showed a figure approaching me and pointing in a distance before I passed out in the storm.

“What exactly had happened back then?” Irem turned to ask me, but I was equally surprised as them. I hadn’t expected that her camcorder would record the incident.

“I don’t know either.” I lied to her.

“Are you still going to keep denying it?” She got up, and confronted me.

“Please, explain what’s going on here?” Sean asked, but none of us answered.

Tension thickened between us as the pregnant silence that followed became uncomfortable, then, she spoke,

“If I have this video, it means that David’s team must also have it.”  

She was right. Abigail had instructed her team to record the storm to see the passing ghosts of the desert. The purpose was to locate the moving water of the desert by observing their movement.

“I have told you everything about this team, but you don’t trust me.” Irem gritted her teeth, and I knew I couldn’t hide it from her any longer.

“I did see them.”  I admitted. “But, I was too stunned to process anything.”

“Hisam is with the team checking the videos. Do you think you can fool them?” She was furious.

“I am not hiding anything.” I insisted, defending myself.

“Where is Rhea?” Karim barged inside the tent, and asked me to come with him. He told me the team was checking the video recordings and caught something strange on their cameras.

“This entire matter is suspicious. You need to be careful.” I appreciated him for giving me heads up and walked inside the tent with him. Professor David was already inside with Joachim and Abigail.

“Miss Cordon.” Professor David greeted me. “It’s good to see you being recovered, but I have something to ask you.” The man said to me.

“Did you encounter something strange in the storm?”  David asked me, and I grew tensed. He showed me a video of the figure pointing at something to me on his laptop.

“Can you tell us what had happened back then?” He circled around the table, and stood opposite to me.

I started breaking a sweat under his scrutiny, but couldn’t let him corner me and break me down with his mind games.

 “I thought I was seeing things in the desert.” I told him. “I had passed out due to shock.”

Abigail who was standing next to Joachim gave me a skeptical look, but I remained calm in such situation.

“Can you recall anything else?” The woman asked me. “Any small or insignificant detail will be of great help for us.” I told them that everything had happened so fast that I could not process it.

Then, I pulled the reverse card, and asked them, “Why are you asking me about it?” I  looked up at David from the screen and said,  “Did something happen?”

“Oh, No! There’s nothing to worry about, Miss Cordon.” He laughed brushing off the entire matter.

 “It’s just that we thought that person might have told you about the oasis.” Fearing I couldn’t escape their questioning, I pretended to feel dizzy and grabbed the edge of the table.

“I think you should rest then.” He told me, and I nodded. I rushed out of the tent and took a sigh of relief. However, I didn’t leave immediately from there, and sneaked around the tent to hear on their conversation.

“What should we tell him?” I heard Abigail say to David. “Tell him that there’s no rush. Keep an eye on the girl for now.”  He instructed her.

 I hid when Abigail came out of David’s tent, and went to talk to the other team. The person they were talking about must have been the true mastermind behind it.

I tried to slip out of the campsite, but Abigail had already sent someone to tail on me. I didn’t venture further into the desert, and pulled out my cellphone to snap some pictures.

I felt suffocated being monitored, and decided to get out of that place as soon as possible. David had already become suspicious of me, and wouldn’t let me off his hook that easily. I took a stroll for a while, collecting my thoughts, and planned to leave that night.

When I returned, I saw Okba and Zimar lurking around the campsite. The girl pulled me inside his tent. Sean was also inside and sked me to tell them the truth.

“What did Abigail tell you about this project?” I questioned the siblings. “We are to assist another team in studying thermal radiation and electromagnetic fluctuations in the desert.”

Sean answered, but said that that he didn’t know the rest of details of the project.

“There’s no such project.” I told them. “The team is here to find a relic and open a portal to another dimension for them to enter”. Zimar and Sean faltered back in surprise, and said that there might be some misunderstanding.

“Hisam and Irem know about it.” Sean looked at Okba who also nodded in affirmation. The man had also been forced into coming to the desert. Since Okba knew how to locate the moving water, those people threatened him with his family when he refused to take on the job.

“But, this is insane!” Sean commented. “How is it even possible!”

“These people are not normal.” I told them. “What do you mean not normal?”  Zimar became horrified.

 I told the siblings how I had accidentally entered another dimension, and met Dylan from that word. Later, I met Yousef and Irem in Türkiye who led me to see Hisam and Karim afterwards. In the end, I joined their team and came to the desert under the pretext of writing a book.

“Irem had told me there’s something wrong with the team that returned from Egypt.”

“Where’s this relic then?” Sean asked us.

“The relic is with the leader of other team.” Okba told us. “However, from what I heard, the piece they found is not genuine. The real one is missing.”

In an instant, I knew that the other piece was the dagger. The one we saw at the museum was of Hachim, but the one I was given was Dylan’s.

“Do you know something?” Okba questioned after seeing me lost in the thought. I told them it wasn’t the right time to talk about it.

“I need to go back before they start suspecting you too.” I stood up, and turned to leave. I couldn’t tell them about the dagger. There’s too much risk involved, and I couldn’t bear losing it.

However, someone said it right that trouble comes in threes. When I went back to my tent, I saw my things scattered on the ground. Someone has been there and rummaged through my luggage to find the dagger. My heart sank, and I rushed to the check the underside of the bed, but the dagger wasn’t there.

“Did you lose something?” Hisam’s voice came from behind me, and I knew that it must be him. He turned to leave, and I ran after him to inquire about the dagger, but the sudden commotion outside stopped me from pursuing the matter.

David’s men had caught the thief, and I recognized that man. It’s one of our local guides.

“I didn’t do it!” The man pleaded, but they had found Zimar’s gold bracelet, Irem’s chain, and David’s Rolex watch on him along with others’ stolen items on him.

“Sir, please forgive me, I won’t do it again!” The man fell on the ground, begging on his knees for life, but David didn’t show him mercy.

“I hate those who steal from me.” He shot the man in his forehead who dropped dead on the ground in a pool of blood around his head.

“Did you lose anything too, Miss Cordon?” David turned to ask me. I shook my head in fear as tears threatened to fell from my eyes.

“Good! Men like him aren’t trustworthy.” He spoke handing the gun back to Joachim. “He tried to steal from us first, later, he could have killed us in our sleep.” He wiped his hand, and left from the scene.

Joachim asked the men to take away the body, and bury him somewhere away from the campsite.

I fell on the ground, and broke down into tears. The man had become scapegoat in place of me. David blamed the theft on him, and silenced the man with a bullet in his head as a warning so that I wouldn’t think about confronting him.

I was completely cornered, and there’s no way out.

I couldn’t sleep that night, and remained on guard lest something happened again.

The paranoia and exhaustion of the day were catching up with me. Whenever, I closed my eyes, I’d see the soulless eyes of the dead guide.

In the last hour of the night, I saw a something sitting outside my tent. I sat up frightened, and saw a small fennec fox in the moonlight. The poor thing didn’t come inside, but moved around in circles to call me to come with it. I slipped out of the bed, and followed it outside into the desert after making sure no one was tailing me.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked it and mentally berated myself for talking to an animal.

I was too sleep deprived to realize that it might be leading me to the other predators, but I was too tired to reason and kept following it without a question.

Eventually, I got tired of walking and asked it, “Little fox, are you taking me to Dylan?” The fox paused to look at me with its shiny black eyes, before running into the desert.

“Hey, Stop!” I shouted as I chased after her before I could lose sight of it. 

The thing ran too fast, and I had a hard time catching up with it. The Fox climbed on a dune, waiting for me to come up too, and ran down the mound to the lake in the desert. I skid down the slope, and dropped on the sand in tiredness.

There, in front of me, was the moving water of the desert.

 I pushed myself up and walked to the water bank. I crouched down, and saw my reflection in the water under the moonlight. The fox also sat beside me, as I touched the surface of the water with my hand creating tiny ripples in it.

“What to do now?” I asked the little fox.

 “Should I jump into the water?” The fox gave me a funny look before running away from there.

“Hey, come back!” I shouted after it, but the fox was gone. I kept staring into the water considering whether I should dive into the water or not. If it’s the mirror of that world, I could only go to that place after getting down in there.

I was roused out of my thoughts as ripples started appearing on the water’s surface, and heard his voice.

“Rhea?” He called, and I looked around myself to see if he’s there. He called my name again, and this time, I looked down into the water to see his reflection.

“Is it really you?” I asked him in disbelief. His hair had grown longer, and he looked haggard. I felt a sudden pang in my heart. How long had it been since I last saw him?

 “Did you get the dagger?” He sounded tired, and I felt ashamed for losing his dagger.

“I have lost it.” I told him about those people, and how I was tricked into coming to the desert.

“The dagger shouldn’t be in their hand. They would use it to destroy the barrier between the two worlds.”

“What do you mean?” I become alarmed at his revelation.

“These people have escaped from that world, and taken over the identities of the real people. It’s happening frequently. If the barrier is gone, your world will be destroyed.” He forewarned me.

“What should I do?” I asked him feeling useless. “I can’t fight them heads on. One person has already died because of me.”

“As long as you have got your golden hairpin, you will be safe.” He assured me.

“I’m afraid that it has also got something to do with them.” I answered. I told him that the hairpin also used to have a red stone on it just like Hachim’s dagger. However, it’s left to me by my grandmother when I was child so I didn’t remember much about it.

“It must be your hairpin then.” He explained to me. “There are two relics to regulate and open the barrier, each to be kept in separate world for the balance. Now, that Hachim’s dagger has already appeared in your world, the hairpin must return to its original place.”

“Do you mean…”

“The Catastrophe of the world is already set.” He told me. The hairpin needed to be returned, but I couldn’t enter that place without his dagger since it’s him who destroyed the stone to seal the barrier, and prevent me from coming back.

“I need to stop them.” I got up to leave, but he stopped me. “Heaven’s punishment is already here. Those people in the desert will die in the morning. You can’t go back.”

“If I don’t go back, the innocents will die too.” I said.

If it’s heaven’s punishment, then, I’d also face it with them.