The sun never quite rose.
Not here.
It hovered instead—eternally trapped in the haze of dawn, casting long, cold light over the island where Keal had awoken. Mist clung to the stones and the high grasses, and the waves beat a rhythm as patient as death.
Keal wandered.
He didn’t rush. There was nowhere to go, no one to find. The island was only a few miles wide, jagged cliffs surrounding a weathered interior filled with ancient trees, twisted like they remembered too much. Every path he took curved back toward the sea, and every cave he found felt older than language.
He spoke to none of it. He listened.
Birds did not sing here. There were no animals. No bones. But something pulsed beneath the land—a frequency felt more than heard. Magic, maybe. Or memory.
He found water. Shelter. En
