Elara’s POV
The morning light seeped through the trees, casting fractured rays across the forest floor. I woke to the sound of birds in the canopy, their song oddly soothing, though the weight in my chest was anything but. My head throbbed as if I’d been asleep for years, and my limbs felt like they’d been made of stone. Blinking, I tried to clear the fog clouding my mind, but every thought felt distant, hollow, as if I were trying to hold on to a dream that had slipped away with the dawn.
I didn’t remember lying down here, in the heart of the woods. I didn’t remember how I got here at all. There was only a faint, bitter taste in my mouth, and something tugging at the back of my mind—memories, fragments of sensations. A warm, searing heat. The whisper of my own name in the darkness.
My
