Dawn came to the Dreaming Vale like a farewell sigh. The mists, still heavy with starlight, unraveled into soft ribbons that drifted between the sleeping trees. Seren stirred from her dream beneath the willow's arch, feeling the residue of moonlight still pulsing gently in her veins. When she stood, the grass pressed back as if reluctant to let her go.
Her mother was already awake, sitting near the dying embers of their small campfire. The River-Heart Crystal hung from her neck, glimmering faintly with hues of blue and green. It was no longer the gentle charm it once seemed—it throbbed with the same heartbeat as the Vale itself, as though it were in conversation with the land.
"Are we leaving so soon?" Seren asked, voice hushed, as though afraid the trees might hear.
Her mother looked toward the horizon, where the first fingers of sunlight brushed across the fields. "The Vale dreams too deeply, child. If we linger, we might never wake again."
Seren turned her gaze to the silver brook winding past their camp. It shimmered faintly with sleeping light, and for a moment she thought it bowed toward her—rising in a thin, trembling arc before settling back with a sigh. "It's saying goodbye," she whispered.
"Or remembering," her mother said softly. "Come, before memory turns to longing."
They left the Dreaming Vale behind as the sun climbed higher, stepping from twilight into gold.
---
The path led them across a quiet meadow and then into a wide plain where the earth itself began to glow. Beneath their feet, threads of light pulsed slowly through the soil—like veins beneath translucent skin, glimmering blue and silver in the morning light. Each beat seemed to hum faintly in Seren's bones.
She slowed her pace. "Mother… do you feel that?"
Her mother's eyes flicked toward the ground, then away. "I feel it, yes. But don't follow it. The Veins are alive with old power. They listen."
"To us?"
"To everything."
Seren crouched, laying her palm on the earth. The light beneath her hand brightened at her touch, spreading out like ripples in water. Her pulse quickened as she felt something beneath—a rhythm, ancient and steady. The world's heartbeat. It was as though she were listening to the breath of creation itself.
Her mother's voice broke the trance. "Enough."
Seren pulled her hand back, the glow dimming reluctantly. "It feels like it knows me."
"Perhaps it does," her mother said, eyes shadowed. "But the more the world remembers you, Seren, the more others will notice that memory too."
---
They walked in silence for hours. The plain stretched on endlessly, alive with shimmering roots of light that twisted beneath them like sleeping rivers. The wind carried faint whispers—snatches of melody without words. When Seren turned her head, she sometimes thought she saw movement in the corners of her eyes: creatures of half-light and mist watching from afar.
Once, a herd of spectral deer appeared—translucent shapes grazing among the glowing grass. Their eyes shone with liquid moonlight. Seren took a step toward them, but her mother's hand caught her wrist.
"Let them be," she murmured. "They're not of this hour."
As the day waned, clouds gathered—a slow, silver drift across the horizon. They came to a rise in the land where black stones jutted out of the glowing soil. Upon those stones stood a broken shrine—ancient, half-swallowed by time. Faint veins of light ran through its surface, tracing runes worn smooth by centuries.
"An old waystation," her mother said quietly. "The ancients built these to touch the Veins safely."
Seren approached the shrine, brushing her fingers along the smooth black surface. The runes flared weakly beneath her touch, then brightened, forming the shape of a flowing current. Within that glow, murals began to appear—scenes shifting like memory through water.
She saw figures—mages of long ago—kneeling beside rivers of light, drawing power upward into their hands. But then the vision changed: one figure stood apart from them, luminous and unbound by any mark of the others. This figure stood between the Veins and the mages, holding out both hands as if to calm the flow.
It was her face. Younger. Older. Timeless.
"Mother," Seren whispered. "She looks like—"
Before she could finish, the murals flared and a voice filled her mind:
Flow must not be claimed. It must be remembered.
Seren stumbled back as the glow faded. Her mother steadied her, the River-Heart Crystal pulsing rapidly against her chest.
"That phrase," her mother said, voice barely audible. "It's a warning… one the world forgot."
---
They rested by the shrine that night, the ground beneath them softly aglow. Seren couldn't sleep. She watched the veins pulse in the earth, in perfect rhythm with her heart. The hum in the air seemed to speak to her, not in words but in feeling—a language of warmth and light.
When she rose to fetch water, she found it: a river of pure mana winding through the plain. It was not made of water but light, fluid as silk, whispering faint sounds like music trapped beneath glass. She knelt beside it and, despite her mother's warnings, reached out.
The instant her fingers touched, the world opened.
She felt every stream, every lake, every hidden spring—each pulse connected to the next like veins within a living body. She saw mountains breathing with waterfalls of light, seas turning in slow exhalations, and deep beneath it all, a single, immense heart beating beneath the crust of the world.
All rivers are one.
Then the connection shuddered. The glow flared into a storm of light, a quake rippling through the plains. Seren gasped and drew back, her arm burning with invisible current.
Her mother was beside her in an instant, grasping her shoulders. "You must learn restraint," she said sharply, though her eyes were full of fear. "The world remembers—but it also reacts."
Seren nodded, trembling. "It felt alive. It is alive."
"Yes," her mother said softly, looking out across the glowing horizon. "And it has begun to wake."
---
They camped beside the mana river, wrapped in silence. Seren drifted into uneasy dreams.
This time, the Vale's calm was gone. She stood upon a great height, looking down upon the world as light pulsed through every continent like veins beneath skin. In the far distance rose mountains carved of crystal, their peaks aflame with the same blue glow.
A voice called from the light—distant yet familiar:
Return to the Source.
She turned, trying to find it, but the vision dissolved into thunder.
---
When Seren woke, her mother was already awake, staring eastward.
"You heard it too, didn't you?" Seren whispered.
Her mother nodded. "The Source calls. The heart of all flows."
Seren looked toward the horizon. The mountains glimmered faintly, distant yet alive, veins of blue tracing their sides like molten rivers. She felt it—the pull, the recognition, the promise.
Her mother rose, tightening her cloak. "It begins now," she said quietly. "The world is calling you home."
And together, they walked toward the horizon—where the light of the world bled into dawn.