The oak had been awake all night.
Lyra felt it before she saw it — a vibration under her skin, faint and steady, like something alive beneath the soil trying to find its voice again. The wind carried the scent of sap and earth, and every time she blinked, the edges of her vision pulsed with faint, golden light.
When she reached the tree at dawn, she stopped short.
The trunk was breathing.
Not in the way wood shifts with wind, but deeper — rhythmic, alive. Veins of light ran through its bark like lightning caught mid-strike.
“Eon,” she whispered, barely trusting her own voice. “You should see this.”
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The Door That Remembered
He arrived breathless, hair damp from the mist. “You weren’t supposed to come alone,” he said, but his voice faltered as he saw it.
A seam had appeared in t
