The feeling did not burn.
It rooted and something in my chest aligned.
The cavern reacted and a low resonance rolled through the stone. The whispers sharpened, not chaotic but unified.
“Welcome, Daughter of the Hourglass,” It was a rush of voices. It could have been hundreds or even thousands of them. And we all heard them. Magdalena and Arielle paled, their gazes locked on me.
Daughter of the Hourglass.I’d written that term in my journal. The Seer had called me that. Hearing it now made me realize it must have meant something more.
Something sacred.
The threads around us began to swirl and spin. Then the voices folded around me.
Magdalena stiffened.
“What’s going on?” I hissed.
“Steady, girl,” Magdalena held up her hand. “Keep steady.”
I did, but the strand in my hand surged upward, slipping from my grip only to rise higher, suspended above the lake like a rising star.
“Ask what you will and it will be done,” the voices said.
“Show me you your story.” I gulping past the lump in my throat.
“As you wish.”
The thread turned. Its hidden intersections flared into view. And as it did, its hidden intersections flared into view.
A vast network burst outward from it and thousands of branching lines ignited in gold.
The cavern ceiling vanished. Darkness stretched above us, not stone but sky.
Mountains rose from shadow, ancient and jagged, their peaks crowned in snow. Winds howled across frozen ridges and constellations of stars burned bright.
Then the vision shifted.
Galaythia.
But not as I had known it.
Two moons hung in the heavens. One full and radiant. The other dimmer…fading.
In my journal I’d written about the moon that faded when the Veil was constructed. That was one of the first things I’d learned about the magical realm.
Now I was seeing it.In the past.
Time shifted and I watched as the weaker moon trembled, its silver light thinning, draining as though swallowed by something unseen.
This was an era. The thread was showing me not just a single life but the history of the land.
The golden thread pulsed and the vision of the fading moon fractured.
The mountains groaned.
The seas rose.
Magic shifted.
