Aira gasped for air.
Cold dew clung to her skin, and the scent of pine flooded her senses. When she opened her eyes, she found herself lying on a bed of glowing blue moss. Above her, the sky was cracked—split into delicate fractures of silver light, as though a giant mirror had shattered and frozen mid-fall.
She pushed herself upright, dizzy.
"Where… am I?"
The forest around her was impossibly beautiful and unsettling. Trees with crystal bark towered overhead, their leaves whispering like distant voices. Somewhere far off, a humming song vibrated through the ground beneath her, thrumming in her bones.
She wasn't dreaming.
And she definitely wasn't on Earth.
Her fingers brushed the luminescent moss, which pulsed back gently—alive, aware.
"That's… not normal," she whispered.
A sudden rustle snapped her attention behind her.
A figure stumbled out from between two gleaming trees and collapsed against the trunk. A flash of silver eyes gleamed before he crumpled to his knees. His black cloak hung in tatters, revealing a wound across his side that glowed with a dark, swirling magic.
Her breath caught.
It was him.
The man from the book.
The voice that had called her.
He looked at her with a familiarity that shook her to her core.
"You… came back," he murmured, pain tightening his jaw.
Aira scrambled toward him before she could think. "You're injured!"
He let out a soft, strained laugh. "Still worrying about me first… Some things never change."
Her heart skipped. Still? Never change?
He spoke as if he knew her—deeply, intimately—from a life she didn't remember.
She knelt beside him and reached for his wound, but his hand shot up, catching her wrist—not in force, but in urgent protectiveness.
"Don't," he warned. "The Rift poison spreads through touch. I won't let it reach you again."
Again?
Her mind spun with questions.
Before she could ask any, the forest lights flickered. The ground trembled, the crystal trees humming like an alarm rising in pitch.
His eyes sharpened. "Aira… we have to leave. Now. They've sensed you."
"Who?" she whispered.
He forced himself up, leaning heavily on her. His breath brushed her ear, warm against the cold air.
"The ones who shattered the sky," he said softly.
"And the ones who killed you."
Aira's blood ran cold.
The forest fell silent.