Anara had always felt there was more to the world than the dim glow of the lanterns and the cold murmur of wind against metal-paneled homes.
Even as a child, she wandered further than was allowed—into the skeletal woods and the forgotten ruins etched with glyphs too old for memory.
It was during one of these wanderings
, at the cusp of her sixteenth cycle, that she found the tree.
It was a massive thing—dead, hollowed, and yet standing as if it defied decay by sheer will. Its roots clawed into the soil like ancient bones reaching for remembrance.
Lightning had split its trunk years ago, leaving a narrow crevice barely wide enough for her to slip through.
Inside: silence. Dust motes drifted like lazy spirits in a shaft of faint blue light that filtered through an opening above. The air felt thicker, charged—as though something watched from beneath the earth.
Then she saw it: a stone platform coiled in roots, and atop it, the prism.
It pulsed gently, almost like it breathed. Anara stepped forward, drawn not by curiosity, but by something deeper—like recognition. Her hand hovered, then made contact.
In an instant, the world changed.
The walls illuminated with constellations she'd only dreamed of. Laughter and music echoed from nowhere. She felt warmth—not on her skin, but in her memory—as if a hundred lives before hers had known this sensation.
Then a voice, not spoken but understood:
"The first light is chosen. Ten must be found. The darkness is watching."
Her knees buckled. Her vision flickered like failing firelight. And when she came to, the prism was gone—absorbed into her palm, a faint shimmer beneath her skin.
Anara stumbled back out of the tree into a world that, though unchanged to others, no longer felt the same to her.
She was no longer just a girl with questions.
She had become the answer.
Would you like to continue to Chapter 2, or explore the history of the lost sun? Or maybe follow the perspective of someone else watching Anara from the shadows... 👀