LUCY
I must have slept, because I'm dreaming.
The realization makes my tongue bitter, makes me bitter, because I'm back in the haunted forest.
I recognize the wrongness of the air immediately. As usual, it's thick, cloying, and carries the faint, copper scent of dried blood. And the trees are just the same.
Unlike the lush greenery of Zaden, they are skeletal, their bark black and peeling like charred skin, their branches reaching out like the twisted fingers of the damned.
For gods sake!!
Chills break out across my arms as I turn in a frantic circle.
I'm in the dead center of a clearing, standing within a ring marked by bone-white chalk. It is a perfect, clinical circle. I feel like a sacrificial lamb placed upon an altar, and the primal urge to flee screams through my nerves.
I try to step across the white line, my heart picking up an uneven rhythm, but I hit an invisible wall. A ripple of translucent energy shimmers in the air, pushing me back.
What is going on?
