CHAPTER ONE - UP
CHAPTER ONE - UP
Have you ever stepped outside at night, when the world finally goes quiet, and just... looked up?
Not a quick glance. Not a passing thought.
I mean really looked - long enough for the sky to pull you in.
There's a moment when the stars stop being tiny lights and start feeling like questions.
How many are up there?
How far do they go?
How many people before you have stood in the same darkness, staring at the same Moon, wondering the same things?
The Moon hangs there like it's waiting for you to notice it - steady, patient, ancient.
It doesn't rush.
It doesn't change for anyone.
It just shines, the same way it shined for kings, for shepherds, for warriors, for every ancestor who ever lifted their head and felt small and huge at the same time.
And in that moment, when the night is wide and the world is quiet, something inside you lifts.
Something rises.
Something whispers that no matter where you've been, no matter what's tried to break you, the only direction left - is up.
