She landed hard.
Not on snow, or earth, or stone — but on something softer. Like moss. Like memory. The ground beneath her pulsed once like it was alive and then stilled. Serena woke, it was dark but it wasn't empty.
This dark was full. Thick like velvet—but deeper. It shifted in the margins, like smoke with no fire, curling and uncurling in long, silent waves. With every breath she took, her chest filled with cold. Not the cold, not the blue of winter, but a stillness so total as to embarrass the sound of her own heartbeat.
She tried to stand.
The ground around her gave, rippled, too much like sand but sturdier than the haze-printing up around her. It was difficult to discern where the space began — or whether it even did. No sky above. No floor below. Just a dead glow beneath her feet, faint and silvered, like frost catching the light of a moon she couldn't see. She wasn't alone. Its sound was absent, but she knew something else was here.
Watching and waiting.
