The wind had returned—but it no longer moved as air. It moved as a presence.
Sher stood in the forest of impossible trees. The bark on each trunk shifted faintly, as though alive with memory. Fragments of what he had just seen flickered at the edges of his mind: the eye beneath the water, the threads on his skin, the breath of unseen things.
But something else now stirred.
He turned—and there she was.
A woman stood at the bend of a crooked path between two trees that were too close together to walk through. Yet she had emerged as if from nowhere. She wore a deep, earth-colored cloak that clung to her like mist, and her hands—both gloved in black leather—rested calmly at her sides.
Her face was unreadable. Not hidden, not revealed—held back, like a memory refusing clarity.
"You're looking for what can't be found," she said, her voice neither soft nor hard.
"That's why you may find it."
Sher stepped closer, uncertain. "Who are you?"
She tilted her head. "Names are weights. You've barely begun to carry your own."
The moment stretched, heavy with questions he couldn't voice.
Instead, she reached into her cloak and removed a small object: a key.
It shimmered like heat over desert stone. Not metal. Not crystal. Something between textures, between states of matter. When Sher reached to take it, it vibrated against his fingers—not violently, but like it recognized something in him.
"When you open the wrong thing," she said quietly, "make sure you meant to."
Sher held the key. It pulsed once. Then again. Like a second heartbeat.
Before he could speak, she stepped backward. Not into space, but into a sliver in the air, a crack between the trunks. The air folded—then sealed.
She was gone.
Only then did he realize: the path she'd come from hadn't existed before. And didn't exist now.
And in his hand, the key whispered something wordless.
Not a voice.
A question.