Prologue - The Dream
Mist clings low to the forest floor. Damp soil cools my bare feet. Towering trees rise around me, dark and still. Wet earth and pine fill my lungs so completely that, for one suspended moment, I know this is what home is meant to feel like.
I have never seen this place before, yet I know it.
A voice moves through the trees.
Not words. Not sound. Something older than speech. A longing so deep it seems to come from the center of me rather than from the forest itself. It calls with the desperate tenderness of a mother reaching for a child who has been gone too long.
I follow.
The trees thin, opening into a small meadow ringed with moss and stone. A waterfall spills from the rock face, crashing into a dark pool below. Mist hangs over the clearing, softening the edges of everything. The last of the evening light lingers there, bruised gold and faint green, turning the meadow into something half real, half remembered.
I want to stay.
But the voice calls again.
The waterfall roars, and beneath that roar I feel the same impossible pull that waits for me in this place. Neither threat nor comfort. Something larger than both. A summons that seems to know me better than I know myself.
Closer.
I step into the water.
The cold closes around me, stealing the heat from my skin. Smooth pebbles shift beneath my feet as I move deeper, careful and unable to stop. The current presses harder against me.
Closer.
The roar fills my head until it seems there is nothing else in the world.
For one fleeting moment I float.
Then the waterfall takes me.
Cold crashes over my head. Panic tears through me. The water drags me down and under, forcing the air from my lungs. I fight for the surface and find only darkness.
Panic loosens into something stranger. A sudden, terrible calm.
Surrender.
