The closer they got, the more the shape lost its illusion.
It wasn't a single house.
It was a village. Which made things even more weird, he could see a house not being painted on a map, maybe it wasn't that important, or just established after the map was made.
But a whole village, that was... strange...
For such a dangerous place like the desert, where finding a village could be considered a saving grace, for one not to be drawn on the map, there had to be a reason... or maybe it was just made after the map they got, which in that case it was them who got scamed, since who knew how many other villages were in the desert that the map didn't have.
Small, scattered, and barely holding together, as if it had been placed there without much care for structure. The buildings were uneven, some leaning slightly to one side, others half-buried in sand, their lower walls completely swallowed by the desert over time.
There was no clear path leading into it.
