Category:
Fantasy
Published:
Nov 16, 2025
Updated:
Nov 16, 2025
Reading time:
3 minutes
The Road That Shouldn’t Be There
Kael had crossed the Red Dunes a hundred times. Traders knew the routes by heart — the safe dunes, the treacherous ones, the places where the wind carried strange echoes. But on the third night of his trip, he spotted something impossible:
a lantern glowing on top of a dune where no one camped.
It flickered with a pale blue flame.
Cold, quiet, steady.
Almost inviting.
No traveler used such light. No caravan would leave a lantern behind. And yet Kael felt a pull, as if the flame recognized him.
The Keeper of the Lantern
When he reached the top, he found an old man sitting cross-legged beside the lantern. Cloak torn, beard tangled, eyes dark as the dunes at midnight. He didn’t look lost — he looked like he had been waiting centuries.
“You took your time,” the man said.
Kael opened his mouth, but the stranger lifted a finger.
“Choose a path. The lantern shows nine.”
He pushed the lantern into Kael’s hands. The metal was cold enough to sting. The flame inside shifted, swirling into shapes — branching roads, twisting trails, strange symbols.
Kael blinked.
The dunes below were no longer empty.
Nine glowing paths stretched into the darkness, each a different color.
Paths of Things Forgotten
Kael stepped toward the first path — a violet road curling like smoke. As he approached, he felt a pressure behind his eyes, like forgotten memories pushing forward. When he blinked again, the path faded, replaced by another.
The blue path hummed with voices he almost recognized.
The green one smelled like rain, though the desert never saw a drop.
The red one pulsed like a heartbeat.
“Where do they lead?” Kael asked.
“To what you’re not supposed to find,” the old man answered.
“And if I walk one?”
“You don’t come back the same.”
The Choice He Shouldn’t Have Made
Kael picked the gold path — the only one that looked warm. It stretched far across the dunes, glowing brighter as he moved. The lantern guided him, its flame shifting gently, as if approving his choice.
But halfway down the trail, the sand turned to stone.
The sky darkened into deep twilight.
And ahead stood a gate carved out of something that wasn’t quite metal, wasn’t quite bone.
Relief hit him first.
Then confusion.
Then fear.
Because engraved on the gate was his name.
And below it, a date — one he hadn’t lived yet.
The Return to the Dunes
Kael stepped back. The lantern flickered wildly, its flame turning white. The path behind him dissolved into sand again, as if the desert dragged it back into hiding.
He ran.
He didn’t look at the other paths.
He didn’t check if the old man was still waiting.
He followed the faintest glow of normal moonlight until his feet sank into familiar dunes again.
At dawn, traders found him walking in circles, whispering about a gate with his name on it.
When they looked around, nobody saw any paths, any lantern, any footprints except his.
But Kael sometimes wakes at night to a faint blue glow leaking through his tent wall.
The lantern hasn’t forgotten him.
The paths haven’t either.