Prologue
It's always the same dream....
The hour before dawn holds a stillness unlike any other—heavy, reverent. The world waits in hush, as if the earth itself is holding its breath. It was during this in-between time, in the lingering folds of night, that I saw her burn.
She stood in the clearing where the snow had not yet dared to fall, a figure carved from shadow, defiant beneath the coming sun. In her palm, a faint card–the Grey Tower card, its edges softened with age, the ink fading in places but never unreadable. The sky above was still bruised with indigo, only the faintest sliver of gold bleeding along the eastern rim. It turned the frost at her feet to fire, her silhouette to a statue of obsidian and light.
Her dress—lace as dark as dried blood—shivered in the cold, yet she held herself with impossible stillness, like a martyr awaiting judgment. Or a queen embracing execution.
Then the fire came as the sun rose.
It did not descend. It bloomed. From her fingertips, where the frost melted first, it rose in slow confession, tracing the shape of her—each ember another secret exposed. Lace ignited with a whisper, skin split with blistering reverence. She bore it in silence, regal even as the blaze devoured her breath.
I could not move. Could not look away.
When it reached her face—when her red lips peeled back—the animalistic screech came.
Not human but beast.
A sound forged of brimstone and grief. It shattered the dawn's fragile peace and left the birds too afraid to sing.
Then she crumbled.
Her body folded into embers, swallowed by the rising wind. Ash spiraled upward in trembling patterns, beautiful, at peace and sadly erased in the same breath. Not even the scorched earth kept her shape. Only the smell lingered—sweet, metallic.
Final.
I had known, somehow. In the curve of her smile, in the way her shadow stretched too long. She wanted this.
But it wasn't the silence that haunted me. Not even her screams. It was the second cry—far off, buried beneath the trees, rising with the mist. A sound half-remembered, like something buried beneath cellar stones. Older than the church bells. Older than mercy. The screech mourns her.
My pulse stuttered. And I woke up where even in the quiet, I could still hear the cry. Faint. Echoing. Not gone.
