The orb that carried Miraen's last journal floated down the Moon River, bobbing and turning like a dream refusing to sink. It passed through mist-covered valleys, beneath bridges overgrown with moss, and along villages that had grown up on old ruins. No one disturbed it—children chased it, birds danced above it, but none touched it—until it reached the delta, where ocean and river kissed.
There, a boy named Kaelen found it.
He was barely sixteen, wiry and quick, with a wild tangle of dark curls and a star-shaped birthmark on his neck. He wasn't supposed to be near the river. His village had strict rules about it—"the river is full of ghosts," the elders always said. But Kaelen didn't believe in that kind of ghost. He believed in voices. Whispered ones. He heard them sometimes in his sleep.
