A single, ragged sound tore from her throat, a shallow gasp that echoed the frantic, irregular rhythm of her hammering heart. Her breathing was not merely sharp, it was a seized, desperate hitch, like a broken clock desperately trying to tick. She was adrift, a fragile wreck tossed upon a sea of moss and shadow, wandering aimlessly through the dense growth, every direction a meaningless blur. The very coordinates of her existence—where she was going, where she was from, and who she was—had been brutally scraped from her memory, leaving behind a terrifying, echoing void.
She lifted her vacant gaze, the sheer scale of the trees an immediate, crushing weight. They were not just trees; they were gargantuan sentinels, silent and black, their crowns swallowed by the ink-dark sky, their branches like skeletal fingers perpetually reaching. She inhaled deeply, drawing in the musty, feral scent of the ancient forest, a heavy perfume of damp earth, decaying leaves, and something indefinable—something wild and primal.
Every fibre of her being screamed a warning. Her senses, stripped bare by the trauma of forgetting, had sharpened to a painful, almost supernatural degree. She proceeded with a slow, agonizing caution, each step an act of defiance against the unknown. High above, a malevolent, swollen Full Moon hung in the dark expanse—a terrifying, luminous orb of bright light. It didn't offer comforting illumination; it bathed the scene in an eerie, theatrical glow, painting the ground in strokes of ominous grey and stretching the shadows of the trees into long, monstrous, coiling specters that seemed to track her movement. An imperative, visceral need pulsed in her veins: she had to find her way back. Back to Home, a concept now only a phantom ache in her soul.
A thick, paralyzing cable of fear clamped down, squeezing the breath from her lungs and chilling the blood in her veins. Her forehead, already clammy, glistened with a fine layer of precipitated, icy sweat, the physical manifestation of her inner terror. A wave of profound self-disgust washed over her—the sour, stale stench of her own filth and panic was an unbearable intimacy. She ran a trembling hand over the fabric of her dress, baffled by the rough, sticky texture clinging to her skin. She couldn't recall the event that had left the hem of her simple gown tattered and rent, trailing like a beggar's flag. The complete absence of memory was a prison without walls. All that existed was the raw, undeniable need to escape this suffocating, thick forest, which seemed to possess a hundred invisible eyes, scrutinizing her every move, sticking to her like a cheap, cloying perfume one could never wash off.
She trod with painstaking delicacy, the silence of her movement an attempt to vanish, to avoid making the slightest sound that might alert an unseen, waiting predator. She paused, mid-stride, her entire body locking, when she felt it—a ripple in the air, a vibration in the ancient silence—a moment before her eyes registered anything. The sensation was inexplicable, a profound, heavy shift that she could not categorize. In that instant, the collective, hostile gaze of the forest seemed to sharpen, becoming acutely aware of the event unfolding around her.
She forced a deep, shuddering breath, attempting to anchor her runaway thoughts and analyze the strange feeling. She closed her eyes, willing her frantic consciousness to calm and distill the essence of the surrounding world. She listened with every pore: to the frigid sigh of the breeze, the delicate, rustling secrets of the dry leaves, the staccato, brittle snap of unseen dry twigs. She listened for anything, but most keenly, she listened to the rhythm of her own heartbeat.
Gradually, miraculously, the frantic drum slowed, and her breathing settled into a controlled, purposeful rhythm.
Finally, her eyelids lifted. The light of the moon seemed less menacing now. And there it was—the realization—clear, sharp, and undeniable: Familiarity. A sense of belonging, deep and ancient. Had she truly been here before? Her mind was a blank slate, offering no answers, but a deep, primal corner of her heart knew. It whispered a reassurance: You are safe, for now.
Driven by this unexpected solace, she continued onward, her eyes desperately scanning the shadows for any shape, any broken branch, any sign that might jar a single, precious memory loose.
Just ahead, the oppressive canopy gave way. She proceeded toward a shocking, perfectly circular clearing. It was unnerving, an anomaly in this wild, untamed wilderness—a smooth, natural gap in the continuous forest fabric, bearing no visible scar of human interference. The ground there was impossibly vibrant, a verdant tapestry of glowing green, the blades of grass appearing to shine with their own internal light, even under the bright, intoxicating hue of the moon.
She sank to her knees, the tension momentarily draining from her limbs, and examined the turf. It was preternaturally soft, slightly damp with dew, swaying almost imperceptibly in the cool, gentle air. It felt right. A deep, internal resonance settled over her. She stayed there for a long moment, simply existing, absorbing the quiet calm, her gaze tracing the perimeter of the magical space. Eventually, the urge to find answers compelled her forward. She stood, pulling herself back into motion. But as she neared the far edge of the clearing, the world tilted violently.
Her head began to spin, a dizzying, nauseating spiral that threatened to drag her into the earth.
Her breath hitched painfully, now more a spasm than a gasp. Her vision fractured and blurred, dissolving the moonlit scene into streaks of white and black. An agonizing fire erupted in her chest, a searing, suffocating burn that felt like the air itself was turning toxic. Clutching her breastbone with a death grip, she struggled to maintain her vertical balance, fighting the overwhelming urge to surrender to the dizziness and fall. With her eyes squeezed shut against the chaos, she forced her legs to keep moving, one agonizing step after the other.
Then, she heard it.
In the midst of the blood-red silence, a sound—a name. It was faint, ethereal, less a voice and more a vibration of air, a sound almost like a whisper caught on the wind, yet she had heard it with unmistakable clarity. "Aury."
Her voice, raw and fragile, barely managed to form the response:
"Who's there?" She strained to listen, but the moment she focused, a profound, almost soul-sucking weariness descended upon her, heavy and debilitating. An unnatural fatigue made every fiber of her body heavy. Her mind, suddenly flooded, was filled with inaudible, comforting murmurs, a confusing symphony of white noise. The biting cold of the forest vanished, replaced by a strange, enveloping warmth, as comforting and total as being wrapped in a thick, familiar blanket.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it ceased. The murmurs, the comforting heat, the stomach-lurching dizziness, the ethereal lightness—all of it vanished. The vise-like tightness in her chest released its hold, and she could finally draw a deep, clean, life-affirming breath. It was gone, erased as if the preceding moments were merely a fevered hallucination.
She leaned heavily, catching her breath, her right hand still pressed against the spot where the fire had burned, the left braced against her knee. What happened? She wondered while still trying to process the impossible, she heard it—a sound that was too concrete, too real, to ignore. A snap. Her eyes flew open, wide with a surge of renewed, chilling shock, as the absolute certainty of what it was—a heavy foot breaking a dry branch—finally registered.CHAPTER ONE
The Barrier
She woke on the forest floor with her lungs already burning.
The sound that tore from her throat was thin and unfinished, more breath than voice, as though her body had remembered how to panic before her mind had remembered why. Her chest rose too fast, too shallow, ribs locking halfway through each inhale. It felt like trying to breathe through fabric soaked in water.
She rolled onto her side and coughed, palms digging into damp moss. The ground was cold enough to sting through her skin. That sensation—sharp, immediate—was grounding in a way nothing else was.
She stayed there for a moment, listening.
No footsteps.
No voices.
No animals.
Just the low creak of trees shifting in the wind and the faint, constant hum of insects somewhere beyond sight.
She pushed herself upright slowly. Her head swam, not violently, but enough to make the world feel slightly misaligned, as though it had been set down wrong. She waited for the dizziness to pass. It didn't, exactly—but it softened, dulled at the edges.
The forest loomed around her.
The trees were enormous, their trunks dark and close together, their upper branches swallowed by shadow. The canopy above blocked most of the sky, leaving only thin, irregular slashes of pale light filtering through. Everything smelled damp—rotting leaves, wet bark, earth turned old and sour.
She looked down at herself.
Her dress was simple. Too thin for the cold. The hem was torn unevenly, as if it had been snagged and pulled rather than cut. There was dirt ground into the fabric, especially at the knees and along one side of her hip.
She didn't remember falling.
She didn't remember anything.
The thought arrived without panic, which struck her as strange later—how easily she accepted it. At the time, it felt obvious. Of course she didn't remember. Memory was something people had. She simply didn't.
She stood.
Her legs held her weight without complaint. No pain flared, no weakness followed. That was reassuring, though she couldn't have said why. She brushed her hands against the skirt of her dress, then stopped when her fingers came away darkened with grime.
She wiped them on the cleaner fabric near her waist instead.
The forest pressed in as she moved. There was no clear path, no break in the undergrowth that suggested direction. Every way forward looked the same—trees, roots, shadow. She chose a direction at random and began to walk.
She moved quietly.
Not because she was afraid, exactly. The instinct came first, the reasoning second. Loud things were noticed. Noticed things were dealt with.
She didn't know how she knew that.
The air changed without warning.
It wasn't dramatic. No shimmer. No sound. Just a subtle shift, like stepping from shade into sunlight—or out of it. The pressure in her ears eased. The faint hum she hadn't realized she'd been hearing vanished.
She paused.
Nothing looked different.
The forest continued ahead, uninterrupted. Same trees. Same moss. Same low light. She frowned, turning in a slow circle, searching for whatever had prompted her to stop.
Nothing.
After a moment, she stepped forward again.
Behind her, unseen, the barrier screamed.She stepped forward again.
Behind her, unseen, the barrier screamed.
And far beyond the forest, wards flared, alarms ignited, and an entire kingdom turned its gaze toward the place where she stood—already guilty of something she did not know how to name.