The desert never made it easy.

Every dune looked the same. Every gust of wind erased the trail. But Ajar refused to slow down.

“She has to be close,” he said, eyes scanning the endless horizon. “Camels can’t move that fast in this heat.”

Behind him, Pitt dragged his claws dramatically through the sand.

“Well, neither can scorpions, but I don’t see anyone giving me a ride,” he panted. “My legs are filing a formal complaint.”

“You’ve got six legs,” Gary snapped, slithering beside them with all the warmth of a brick wall. “They’ll survive.”

Ajar ignored them both. He crested the top of a dune, narrowed his eyes—and stopped cold.

“Wait,” he said. “What’s that?”

Just ahead, in the hollow between two dunes, something pale poked out from the sand. It shimmered faintly under the sun.

Ajar slithered down quickly, brushing sand aside with his tail. “It’s an egg…”

“Please tell me you said ‘egg’ and not ‘skull,’” Pitt called from behind. “Because one of those is way less cursed than the other.”

Gary peered at it. The thing was smooth, white, almost glowing, like it didn’t belong to anything from this desert.

“That’s not from any snake I know,” he said. “Too round. Too exposed.”

“It’s warm,” Ajar murmured, coiling slightly around it. “Still alive.”

“Great,” Pitt muttered, climbing onto a nearby rock. “Mysterious desert egg. Next step? It hatches into a flying nightmare that eats us one by one.”

“We’re not leaving it,” Ajar said firmly.

Gary scowled. “You want to rescue Eva and babysit some mystery omelet?”

Ajar looked up at him. “If someone left this out here to die… we can’t just walk past it.”

Gary didn’t answer, but his jaw tightened.

Pitt raised a claw. “Counter-offer: we bury it again and pretend we never saw it. Huh? Good? No?”