Arty still stared at the wall long after waking, her breath uneven. The creature's last words clung to her thoughts and echoing.
She knew he had said something terrible, something important. But the meaning slipped through her mind. Even the memory of his voice felt faint and dissolving piece by piece.
The place she had been, the tower, the city twisted into a nightmare, everything blurred at the edges. It was drifting away and kept slipping into the dark corners of her mind where she could no longer reach it.
Fear tightened inside her chest.
"I need to write this down!" she whispered urgently to herself.
She jumped from her bed with a pounding heart, and reached for a blank book and a quill on her desk.
She sat down quickly with her hands still trembling, forcing herself to write before the memory vanished completely.
But the moment the quill touched the page, her hand froze.
