The next morning, the sun rose like a blade — sharp and blinding, slicing through the remnants of sleep. I hadn’t gotten much. My dreams had been a collage of twisted limbs and turquoise eyes, spirals etched in blood, and voices chanting in a language that turned to ash in my ears.

I met Dr. Ramirez at the edge of the Henderson property. She wore her usual field gear — khaki shirt, black slacks, gloves tight over her wrists — but her eyes were darker today. Less analytical, more wary. As if she, too, had begun to sense the thing moving beneath the sand.

“She was arranged deliberately,” she said, crouching beside the effigy of Sister Ellen. “No signs of restraint. Which either means she was unconscious… or she went willingly.”

I looked at the bones, the way they twisted inward like the arms of a clock made of ribs and vertebrae. “Willingly? Why would anyone—?”

Ramirez didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. The question hung in the dry air like a curse.

“Look at this.” She pointed to the crown of dried tumbleweeds nestled against the effigy’s brow. Tangled within it were tiny glass vials, each sealed with wax. Inside, bits of hair. Teeth. Ash.

“Sympathetic tokens,” she said. “Witchcraft. Blood magic. It’s… ancient.”

I felt the cold again. Not from fear, exactly. From recognition. Somewhere, deep inside me, something old stirred — as if a part of me had known this before.

Back at the sheriff’s office in Mesilla, I pored over the files we had. Two victims. Ashton Weber, mid-thirties, survivalist loner. Sister Ellen Moreno, fifty-four, missionary nun. No clear connection. No overlapping networks. Nothing that would put them in the same orbit.

Except this desert.

And whoever — or whatever — was out here, writing their story in flesh and bone.

I pulled out the photographs again. The way Ashton had been posed, his mouth sewn shut, his left arm pointing. And now Ellen — not silenced, but displayed. Offered.

To whom?

I called the Las Cruces Mission and asked to speak with someone who had known Sister Ellen. The voice on the other end was a young man, nervous and stuttering.

“She… she changed,” he said. “In the last month or so. I mean, she was still kind. Still gentle. But distracted. Like she’d seen something. Or… like she was hearing something the rest of us couldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were days she’d leave early. Say she had to go into the desert alone. She called it her pilgrimage. I thought maybe it was just personal meditation. But one time… I followed her. Just to be sure she was safe.”

“And?”

He hesitated. “She was praying. But not like before. Not to Christ. She was… whispering in another language. And the way she moved, Mac… it was like she wasn’t really there. Like something else was using her voice.”

That night, I drove out again. Past the Henderson cabin. Past the broken fences and howling winds. I followed the directions I’d marked on a scrap of paper — the same trail Sister Ellen had taken two days before she died.

It led me to a dry arroyo, maybe ten miles from the highway. There was a rock outcropping shaped like a gaping mouth. In its shadow, a circle of stones. Burned black. Marked with symbols that didn’t belong to any culture I recognized. Curved lines. Spirals. Teeth.

At the center, a shallow hole. Inside it — bones. Not human. Not animal either. Arranged in an unfamiliar pattern. Like they’d been broken and reassembled into something new. Something impossible.

The wind shifted, and I smelled it again.

That same acrid tang. Chemical. Artificial.

And underneath it — decay.

I turned to go, but I wasn’t alone anymore.

A figure stood at the edge of the arroyo. Thin. Unmoving. Cloaked in cloth the color of dried blood. No face. No sound.

Only presence.

My breath stopped in my chest. My hand went to my holster. The figure didn’t move. But I could feel its attention, heavy as stone.

Then — it lifted one arm. Slowly. Deliberately.

And pointed.

Just like Ashton.

My legs moved before my brain did. I ran. I didn’t look back until I was in the truck and halfway down the ridge.

When I did… there was nothing there.

But the air still felt watched.

And the desert — vast and empty — had taken a breath.