Chapter 1 The Open Doors
POV: Her
The room was quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels like it's listening.
I lay still in my bed, barely breathing, watching how the darkness curved around the corners of the bedroom. The only light came from the open French doors across the room, spilling in from the outside like something sacred.
A warm breeze drifted in, carrying the scent of something I couldn’t quite name—lavender, maybe, and something richer… like rain before it falls. My eyes followed the curtain as it fluttered, the fabric swaying like it had a rhythm all its own.
Beyond the doors was not my backyard. Not the trees. Not the fence. Not the quiet hum of night I knew.
There was a mountain.
A massive one, etched in violet and gold, its peak kissing the clouds. The sky above it wasn’t night—it was a perfect, impossible blue, lit from a sun I couldn’t see. And there, drifting in slow, graceful silence, were ships.
Flying sail ships.
Their hulls were carved from warm-colored wood, their sails painted in glowing hues—amber, sapphire, crimson, and jade. They moved like they belonged there, like air was as easy to ride as water.
I sat up slowly, the sheets falling from my shoulders. None of it made sense. I should’ve been afraid. I should’ve questioned what was real.
But I didn’t.
Because I could feel him.
There was someone in the room. Still. Quiet. Watching.
I turned my head and saw a figure standing near the foot of the bed. He was tall, half-wrapped in shadow, half-wrapped in that golden light pouring through the doors. I couldn’t make out his face—no matter how hard I tried, it stayed hidden, like the night itself was keeping it from me.
But I knew him.
Not by name. Not by memory.
By something deeper.
By the aching familiarity of his presence, the way my soul calmed even as my heart raced. Like I had waited for him through a hundred lifetimes.
And finally, finally, he was here.
He didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
Because in that silence, the world was no longer the one I knew. And I was no longer alone.
