LUCY
I must have slept, because I'm dreaming.
The realization makes my tongue bitter. Makes me bitter. Because I'm back in the haunted forest.
I recognize the wrongness of the air immediately—thick, cloying, carrying the faint copper scent of dried blood. The trees are the same as always. Nothing like the lush greenery of Zaden. These are skeletal things, their bark black and peeling like charred skin, their branches reaching outward like the twisted fingers of the damned.
For gods' sake.
Chills break out across my arms as I turn in a frantic circle.
I'm in the dead center of a clearing, standing within a ring marked by bone-white chalk—a perfect circle. I feel like a sacrificial lamb arranged on an altar, and the primal urge to run screams through every nerve I have.
I try to step across the white line. My heart stutters. I hit an invisible wall—a ripple of translucent energy shimmering in the air, pressing me back with firm, unyielding force.
I'm caged.
