POV - Serena
Sleep did not come gently.
It pulled me under like a tide that had been waiting all night, patient and inevitable. The moment my eyes closed, the world I knew loosened its grip, stone and ward and memory dissolving into something thinner, softer, and far more dangerous.
Fog rolled in first.
It swallowed everything. Sound. Distance. Direction. I stood without knowing how I had arrived there, my boots resting on ground that did not feel like ground at all. It was smooth and cool beneath my feet, like polished marble submerged beneath shallow water. Each breath I took tasted of moonlight and old rain.
This was not a normal dream.
I knew that immediately.
The Veil was close here. Not pressed tight against reality the way it was when I was awake, but stretched thin and lumin
