Meeting Again    

"What happened to them?" Horizon murmured, his voice barely more than a whisper, as though afraid of disturbing the ghosts of the fallen.

He scanned the desolation around them, half-expecting some hidden danger to emerge from the dunes.

"It's like they were baked alive."

Nyx shifted on his shoulder, her eyes narrowing at the sight. "This wasn't a simple death by exposure. No creature leaves bodies this intact in the desert." Her voice was low, almost reverent, as though she sensed something ancient and hostile lingering here.

Horizon's gaze swept over the corpses strewn across the desert sands, each body twisted in silent agony, as though they had been flash-frozen in their last moments of suffering.

The dry, cracked skin of the dead gleamed under the relentless sun, giving them an almost statuesque quality, as though they'd been petrified by the heat.