The dream did not begin gently.
There was no slow descent into memory, no soothing whisper from her mother’s voice, no warmth of Ashen’s fire. It slammed into Rose like a crashing tide, dragging her beneath the waves of something ancient and unresolved.
The world was fire and ash.
She stood in a realm not of the living or the dead—a realm between, made of twilight flame and shimmering light. Trees with silver leaves shimmered around her, their trunks carved with runes that pulsed in time with a heartbeat that wasn’t her own. And in the center of this otherworldly glade, two figures stood.
Seraphiel.
Ashen.
Her mother’s white robes shimmered like starlight, her wings folded at her back, her face serene and yet deeply sad. Ashen stood opposite her, wrapped in a cloak of smoke and dying
