“We have to jump!” I shout. “It’s the only way out!”
“No!” Cassy screams. “We can’t—”
The ledge gives another violent shudder.
There is no more time.
I meet Cassy’s terrified gaze. Mariel’s—wide, searching. Vivian’s—half-lidded, unfocused, but trusting.
What we do in life echoes into eternity.
“Trust me,” I say.
And then I let go.
“No—!” they scream as one.
The darkness rushes up to meet me…
…and blooms into light.
The shadows dissolve around me, and I plunge through what feels like smoke, then stars, then utter silence. Then I hit something soft but solid.
A cavern lit only by starlight.
The air is still. Sacred. The walls glow faintly, like the sky has bent downward to kiss the earth. I stumble forward, drawn to the impossible pool ahead. Its surface is perfectly calm, like a mirror stretched across the floor. It reflects a sea of stars, but there’s no sky above us, only stone. None of this makes sense.
I kneel, reaching for the surface, which ripples beneath my touch. When my eyes meet my reflection, something shifts. A sudden pressure floods my skull. Flashes flicker before my eyes like a candle fighting the wind.
The king. A crown slipping from his fingers.
A wedding dress, burning.
My sister’s lifeless face, lips parted in a scream that never came.
An endless flame consuming the land.
My dagger dripping blood.
Finally, a single rose. I reach for it.
Thorns cut my finger, and blood blooms. The rose turns crimson and bursts into flame, crumbling to ash in my palm.
That’s when she appears.
A woman, cloaked in silver and shadow, rises from the smoke like a memory I’ve forgotten how to hold. Her face is ageless,carved from time and sorrow, her eyes glowing with the soft, mournful light of distant stars.
She does not speak at first. She onlylooksat me. Through me.
I try to ask who she is, but my voice is gone, swallowed by the roar of unseen waves. When she finally speaks, her voice is not one voice, but many, echoing and layered, like a chorus of ghosts singing a forgotten lullaby.
When hope is ash and faith undone,
a heart of thorns and flames must become one.
Find the truth and unlock the past
before the crimson glow has passed.
