Prologue

  He woke to pain.

  Not sharp at first—distant, everywhere, as if his body had forgotten how to belong to him. The ground pressed against his chest with a weight that felt wrong. Heavier than sand. Heavier than water. Breathing took effort. Each breath scraped.

  Am I… alive?

  His vision swam. Green. Too green.

  Trees—no, a forest—loomed at odd angles, their shadows stretching unnaturally long across broken earth. The air smelled of iron and smoke. Somewhere nearby, something crackled, like fire chewing through wood.

  He tried to move.

  Pain answered.

  His right arm refused him entirely. His leg screamed when he dragged it an inch. Something warm slid down his side, sticky, soaking into the dirt beneath him. He didn’t look. Some part of him already knew that if he did, he wouldn’t move again.

  Sea… I was in the sea.

  The memory came in fragments: a horizon split open like a wound, the sky tearing vertically, light swallowing water, pressure crushing his chest before the world folded inside out.

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  No waves.

  No horizon.

  No sound of water.

  A sound reached him then—wet, final.

  He lifted his head just enough to see.

  Bodies lay scattered across what had once been a village. Not ruins—homes still stood, doors broken inward, walls stained dark. Men. Women. Children. Some were torn apart. Others looked untouched, except for the way their lives had been taken from them—cleanly, impossibly.

  No weapons.

  Two figures moved among the dead.

  They wore dark cloaks, faces hidden, walking calmly through the carnage as if inspecting work already done. One crouched, placed a hand against a corpse’s chest, then stood again with a sound that might have been a laugh.

  Terror finally reached his heart.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t move.

  He tried to crawl back, inch by inch, nails scraping soil that felt too dense, too heavy—like the ground itself resisted him. Every movement drained him. His vision dimmed at the edges.

  Behind him, something unseen stirred.

  A faint, pale mist—almost light—clung to his skin, sinking into him without warmth or sensation. He didn’t notice. He was already fading.

  He collapsed against a large stone on the slope, breath shuddering, consciousness slipping like water through his fingers.

  Footsteps approached.

  “Did you hear that?” one of them said.

  “Yeah. Missed one.”

  A pause.

  “He won’t last long like that.”

  The ground shook.

  Heat roared past him, close enough that the air burned. A violent explosion tore into the earth, throwing debris and fire skyward. The two figures leapt back as a voice—calm, furious—cut through the smoke.

  “Enough.”

  Power pressed down on the world. The cloaked figures froze, bodies stiff as if the air itself had turned solid.

  The man who stood between them and the village wore white, his presence bending the space around him. His eyes moved once—to the bodies, to the blood, to the lone, broken survivor barely clinging to life.

  Something dark crossed his face.

  “This one still breathes,” he said quietly.

  The last thing the boy felt before the darkness took him again was the sensation of being lifted—not gently, but carefully—as the weight of the world finally let go.