Darkness. Stillness. Silence.
The first thing Lysander notices is the warmth of her hand in his.
It lingers—soft, fleeting, like the last glow of a dying star.
Somewhere, petals drift through the air. A sky caught between day and night stretches overhead, frozen in its descent into darkness. The wind carries the scent of something familiar, something lost.
"Lysander," a voice whispers.
He doesn't turn.
He knows—somehow—that if he looks, the moment will collapse.
But the cracks have already begun.
The warmth in his hand fades. The air stills. The petals stop midair, then begin to rise—falling in reverse, drawn back into unseen branches.
The horizon flickers. The stars blink out, one by one. The last thing to vanish is the hand in his.
There was never another path.
Lysander wakes up.
Lysander's breathing came fast and ragged.
A moment ago—was it a moment? A dream? A lifetime?—there had been nothing. A vast, suffocating void. No thoughts, no form. Just the weight of existence folding in on itself, silent and absolute.
Then, like glass shattering, reality surged back.
He gasped. His throat clenched around the sound. He tried to move. Nothing.
Dread coiled in his chest, slow and suffocating.
His limbs—dead weight. His hands—numb, unfeeling. His body—trapped inside itself.
His heart pounded, hammering panic into his skull.
Move.
Nothing.
Move, damn it!
The more he fought, the less he felt. His fingers blurred at the edges of his vision—dark tendrils bleeding into his skin, spreading, coiling, claiming him.
No. No.
A ragged breath tore from his throat.
"I just need to stay calm… Breathe. Just breathe."
But the air was wrong—thick, stagnant, humming with an absence that scraped against his senses.
The silence wasn't empty. It was watching.
Something brushed the edges of his awareness. A whisper—too faint to hear, too close to ignore.
Lysander's pulse staggered. He felt the presence before he saw it—the crushing weight of something unseen, vast and waiting.
He was not alone.
His fingers twitched. Slowly, the numbness receded, crawling back into the abyss it had come from. He clenched his fist, exhaling sharply. The black tendrils across his palm remained.
A mark. Old. Familiar. Unwanted.
He didn't want to remember.
Not yet.
Dust curled in the still air, twisting into ghostly spirals before fading.
Too still.
Lysander inhaled carefully, his vision adjusting to the fractured glow around him.
A ruined temple. Or what was left of one.
Time had bled this place dry. The towering pillars that once held the heavens aloft had crumbled, their shattered remains strewn across the floor like the ribs of a long-dead god.
The air smelled of damp stone, old parchment, and something fainter beneath it—burnt incense and dried blood.
Beneath his boots, the floor was etched with symbols, some still pulsing faintly with a long-forgotten light. Veil inscriptions. The language of something beyond human.
Something not meant for mortal eyes.
His gaze swept the ruins, piecing together fragments of a forgotten past.
Then he saw them.
Statues.
Dozens.
Some headless, shattered beyond recognition. Others half-buried in dust, their features worn by time's cruel hand. But one remained untouched, standing at the far end of the temple.
Watching.
Lysander's chest tightened. The weight of its presence pressed against him—not physical, but suffocating all the same.
He wasn't sure when he had started walking toward it.
Or why he couldn't stop.
His boot scraped against something.
He looked down.
Half-buried in the dust, beneath layers of time and neglect, lay a sword.
Its blade—fractured. Its hilt—familiar.
Recognition struck like a knife between his ribs.
He had seen this before. Held it. Wielded it. Lost it.
But when?
His fingers hovered over the hilt, hesitation twisting in his chest. The last time he had held this weapon…
A sharp pain flared behind his eyes. Fractured memories, slipping through his grasp like sand through clenched fists.
No. Not yet.
His hand closed around the hilt.
A whisper brushed the edge of his awareness.
He froze.
Not the same as before. Not inside his mind. This time, it was real.
A voice.
From beyond the shattered temple walls.
Calling his name.
A voice that should have been long dead.