SERAPHINA’S POV
The darkness in the hollow beneath the ancient tree held the same vast, endless promise as the night sky—as if it were brimming with secrets, waiting for the first spark of light to unveil them.
I hesitated at the threshold, fingertips grazing the rough, silvery bark. My heart pounded a relentless rhythm, each beat echoing with a strange, electric recognition that rippled through me.
Everything I’d been chasing—every fragment, every half-truth, every door slammed in my face, every fear I’d carried for thirty long years—coiled together in my chest as I stood at the brink of a precipice I had been blindly approaching my whole life.
The weight of it all pressed so fiercely against my ribs it threatened to splinter them.
Alina’s presence curled warm around my thoughts, steady as an anchor in a storm.
'Breathe, Sera.'
I drew in a slow, deep breath, holding it at the top of my lungs the way Maya had taught me long ago as a centering technique.
