Charred meat and smoke creep into my nose, replacing the fading sweetness of pollen. My head stirs as it’s lifted slightly, and my tight lips are pried open. A thick liquid slides into my mouth—slimy, salty, tingling like static. It worms its way down my throat before my body fully wakes.
“That’s it… drink up,” a soft voice murmurs.
The taste hits me like rot and iron. My muscles, limp only a moment ago, seize violently. I gag hard, coughing and sputtering the liquid back into the dirt. My mind snaps awake as if shocked, and the swimming vision clears; shapes sharpening like the moment you put on glasses.
I blink between heaves, trying to understand what’s happening—what happened—this place, this foul-tasting liquid, my senses slowly coming back to me.
I’m lying on a bed fashioned from the forest itself: a frame made of mismatched branches and stripped trunks, each a different shade—oak, ash, cedar. A thick pelt, the skinned coat of some fluffy woodland creature, sprawls across it. The fur brushes the backs of my legs as they hang off the edge. Another hide lies on the ground as a soft rug, so plush I have the strange urge to sink my toes into it. The colourings familiar. Greens and browns like the vultures from before. I must be dreaming.
My gaze lifts to a slope of tan fabric overhead. A tent. I’m inside a tent.
A low fire burns off to my right, crackling gently, pushing away the cold that always clings to the Hollow. Smoke rising through the small gap in the roof.
Then my eyes slide further—and freeze.
An entire wall, if you can call fabric stretched over sticks a wall, is lined from ground to ceiling with weapons. Dozens of blades in all shapes and sizes, each glowing faintly amber in the firelight. Some are serrated, some curved, some built for crushing, some for skinning—none of them kind.
My pulse spikes, jolting my hand with it, instantly flying to the bedding, patting frantically for my sword, but it’s not here.
Or anywhere near for that matter.
Panic climbs my throat.
The man in the corner has his back to me. He has broad shoulders and a stocky build, definitely someone who could overpower me in the Hollow. If we are still even in the Hollow.
He’s doing something with his hands—cleaning? Sharpening? I can’t see, and I don’t want to. Without my blade, I wouldn’t last two seconds if he decided to—
I need a plan.
Breathe.
Look.
Move.
My gaze flicks to the nearest small blade hanging on the wall. If I’m quiet enough, I could—
I push myself off the bed.
White-hot pain explodes behind my eyes. My knees buckle. The room reels sideways. Before I can steady myself, the man’s head snaps toward me.
He’s holding a knife.
He rises, approaching.
Panic strikes like a lightning bolt. The tent seems to shrink, the walls closing in, trapping me. My breath falters,then shatters entirely as I stumble backwards, desperate to put distance between us. But my head won’t stop spinning.
The tent bends. Warps. Changes. Melts just as the flowers did.
My heartbeat is so loud it thunders in my ears, bone-rattling, painful. I can’t get air. My chest heaves in shallow, useless gasps as the floor beneath me shifts—
The fire is gone.
The tent fades.
The forest pelts vanish.
And suddenly I’mback there.
