The Desert

The vision shifted again.

Renee was in a desert. Not the sandy desert seen in movies, but a desert of stone, a place where the wind howled between rock formations and the sky was such a pale blue it looked washed out. The tanner was there, sitting on a rock, eyes fixed on the horizon.

She approached him, and this time, she could move. She could feel the ground beneath her feet, the wind on her face. He was waiting for her.

"You came," he said, his voice hoarse, tired, like that of someone who had not spoken in a long time. "I knew you would come."

Renee stopped a few meters from him.

"Who are you?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.

"Someone who waits," he said, and a thin, joyless smile curved his lips. "Someone who has been waiting for a long time."

He raised his hand, pointing to the horizon, where the sun was setting in an explosion of red and orange.

"You saw what I saw?" he asked. "You saw what happened to me? You heard what he said?"

Renee did not answer. But she did not need to. He knew she had seen and heard.

"I was like you," he said, and his voice was low, almost a whisper. "I believed. In something. In anything. That the world made sense, that suffering had purpose, that hope was more than a lie we tell ourselves."

He shook his head slowly.

"It is not," he said. "It is none of that. There is no purpose. No meaning. Only emptiness, and everything we do to fill it, love, sacrifice, faith, is just noise. Dust. Illusions we create so we do not go mad."

Renee felt his words like a weight, as if each syllable settled on her shoulders and pulled her down.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked, her voice weaker than she would have liked.

He stared at her, and his dark eyes seemed to contain all the sadness in the world.

"Because you are carrying the same burden I carried," he said. "Faith in something greater. The belief that sacrifice is worth it. The hope that, in the end, everything will have meaning."

He stood slowly, his bones cracking, and took a step toward her.

"It is all a lie," he said. "And I want you to see that before you are destroyed by it."

Renee took a step back, but he did not come closer. He just watched her, with those tired eyes, that empty expression.

"Do not trust me," he said. "Do not trust anyone. Just... see. See what time does to everything you love."

And then the desert dissolved, and Renee woke up.

She was in her bed, in the dormitory, the morning light coming through the window. The rain had stopped, and the sky was a light gray, as if it were tired of crying.

Renee was breathless, her heart racing, cold sweat running down her forehead. She looked to the side and saw the pickaxe, still wrapped in cloth, still pulsing faintly.

She did not know what day it was. Did not know if it was Saturday, Sunday, or some weekday she had already lost. All she knew was that the man on the bench, the beggar, the wanderer, had entered her dreams.

And he had shown her what time did to everything one loved. And he had shown her the curse he carried, the words that had condemned him to an endless wait.

Renee sat up in bed, her legs trembling, and held the pickaxe with both hands.

"What do you want?" she whispered, not to Moradin, but to the man she still felt hovering at the edges of her consciousness.