The dressing room was thick with smoke, and Cassia inhaled deeply -- the smell of pine and sage calmed her shaking hands as she drew on her face-paint on in careful, measured lines. Red for fervor, purple for wonder, green for knowledge and a base of yellow for the colour of life, the sunlight across waters, petals on the wind. The paint was cool against her skin as the bristles whispered across her cheeks, forehead, eyelids.

A horn boomed from outside, its timbre shaking the wooden walls around her.

Cassia pinned up her skirts and ducked outside. The fire was already burning in the centre of the lakeshore, drums beating in time with the winds. Cassia locked eyes with her brother. Karon smiled back from his seat at the head of the drumming brigade, face adorned in the same colours. Cassia counts herself in, keeping time with her palm tapping against her thigh in a steady rhythm. Eventually, after twelve beats, it came, the cue, a rapid succession of high-pitched beats from her brother's drum and she linked arms with her sisters-in-dance. Feya stood on her right, and Pittia on her left, looping arms through ribbon-adorned arm, dancing a ring around the fire, counter clockwise, into the lake, and around the fire again. Cassia closed her eyes as the rest pf the village chanted around her, feeling the dry heat of fire-warmed pebbles under her feet, then the cool, calming waters lapping at her ankles, and back again.

She had always loved the Festival of Jélere, keeper of the waters, and Goddess of life. She had danced this dance twenty-four times now, once yearly since the age of four, when she had been touched by the Goddess herself. Her and the others could see the spirit, during the festival. She felt it now, the familiar tug at the soles of her feet as they summoned Jélere once more. The drums kept time, speeding up slowly before working up into a cacophony of beat, a sonic cleansing fire to welcome the Goddess.

The drums slowed.

In the fire, a shape began to take form. Cassia stared into the embers, rippling from the centre like footsteps into the lake. Jélere stood before her, bathed in orange, and...frowning. That wasn't right. They had done everything right, kept the crops alive, honoured her as if their mother. She shouldn't be unhappy. As the Goddess' form rose from the flames, cloaked in blue satin and flowing dark hair, her copper skin shone in shades of red and purple.

It took another four beats for Cassia to realise that Jélere was bleeding. Her hair was matted to her face with tears, and her dress torn. Her face was frozen in anguish. She opened her mouth, and a singular syllable poured out, cloaked in celestial tongues and stone-deep resonance.

"Run."

And then all the world went dark.

Karon sat in his room, waiting for the ceremony to begin again. It was the thirtieth time he had attended, yet it still hadn’t lost its weight. He flipped his balisong between his fingers, the motion smooth but restless, something to fill the time that dragged far too slowly. “Each minute feels like an hour,” he thought, leaning back with a quiet yawn, his eyes drifting out the window in tired anticipation. Then the distant sound shifted—horns rising sharply through the air, followed by drums that echoed through the village like a heartbeat waking everything at once. His tiredness snapped away in an instant. It was time. He hurried outside, excitement pulling him forward. The village had already gathered, a sea of movement and color swirling around the massive flame at its center. People danced and chanted like it was something carved into their memory, practiced until it became instinct. Karon searched through the crowd and spotted his sister, Cassia, moving near the front with the others. Then the smoke shifted. It thinned just enough for him to see through. Karon froze. Beyond the fire, in the clearing, lay Jeleryn—injured, barely moving, blood staining the ground beneath her. The noise around him felt distant now, muffled like it was happening underwater. Her eyes found his. “Run,” she whispered. And the world collapsed into darkness.

Darkness swallowed them all. Cassia felt it close over her like a wave, cold, heavy, absolute. For a moment she wasn’t sure she still had a body. The world was gone: no firelight, no drums, no sisters-in-dance, no lake lapping at her ankles. Only the echo of Jélere’s voice, that single impossible word, vibrating in her bones.

Run.

Cassia tried to breathe. The darkness pressed back. A gasp tore from her throat as she stumbled forward, knees hitting something soft and damp. Grass. Real, living grass. The world snapped back in fragments: the scent of wet earth, the distant chirp of night insects, the metallic tang of smoke still clinging to her tongue.

The village was gone.

Cassia pushed herself upright, palms trembling. She stood in a clearing she did not recognise, ringed by trees that leaned inward like watching spirits. Moonlight filtered through the canopy in thin, silver ribbons, painting her yellowed skin in ghostly hues. Her other colours smeared down her cheeks in streaks. She wiped at them, but her hands shook too much to do more than smear them further.

“Feya?” she called, voice cracking. “Pittia? Karon?”

Only the trees answered, whispering in the wind as her heart hammered against her ribs. She spun in a slow circle, searching for anything familiar: a lantern, a ribbon, a footprint in the soil. Nothing. The clearing was untouched, as if no one had ever set foot here.

A faint warmth pulsed beneath her feet.

Cassia froze. The sensation was subtle, like a heartbeat deep in the earth. She crouched, pressing her palm to the soil. The warmth throbbed again, stronger this time, and a shiver ran up her arm.

Jélere.

Cassia closed her eyes. She had felt this before, during the summoning, during the dance, during every Festival since she was four. But never like this.

“What happened to you?” she whispered.

The warmth flickered, then faded, leaving the ground cold. Cassia stood slowly, brushing dirt from her skirts. Her breath fogged in the air. Strange. The night wasn’t cold enough for that. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly aware of how exposed she was as her bare feet sank into moss, soft and silent. She moved without thinking, guided by instinct, or perhaps by the faint echo of the Goddess’s presence still humming in her blood. Branches parted ahead of her, revealing a narrow path she was certain hadn’t been there moments ago.

A twig snapped behind her.

Cassia spun, heart leaping into her throat and began to edge back toward the path, pulse roaring in her ears. She couldn’t see anything, but she felt it, something moving through the trees, something heavy, something that soured the air with the stench of iron and rot.

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Karon… please be here.”

Karon whipped around, his thin narrow eyes straining to see through the smoke and ash. Everything around him was grey, as if an explosion had torn the world apart and left him as the only survivor. The village was gone, reduced to burnt shards of wood and broken pieces scattered across the ground. Even the woods in the distance seemed farther away than before. He lay there for a moment wishing he could turn back time, Jerele’s final words still echoing through his mind like a warning he couldn’t escape. Reaching into his somehow untouched backpack, he pulled out his worn knife and forced himself to stand, pain shooting through every part of his body. As he slowly moved toward the woods behind him, a cold feeling crept over him. Something about the forest felt wrong, darker somehow, reminding him of the old ceremonies. Then the ground shook violently, the sound tearing through the trees and ringing in his ears. Whatever was waiting in the forest wasn’t welcoming him. And then another thought hit him suddenly. Where was his sister?

Cassia followed the path. It wound between the trees like a vein, the moss beneath her bare feet glowing faintly with each step. The air grew thicker, colder, as if the forest were holding its breath. She kept glancing over her shoulder, half-expecting to see a familiar face emerge from the shadows. The path dipped suddenly, opening into a hollow she did not recognise. A pool lay at its center, perfectly still, reflecting the moon with unnatural clarity, mirror of silver water set into the earth.

This wasn’t any lake she knew, and she knew these woods well from her days as a huntress. She stepped closer and the water brightened, glowing from within. Shapes swirled beneath the surface: not fish, or life of any sort, but something like threads of light twisting together. Cassia knelt, reaching out a trembling hand.

The moment her fingertips brushed the surface, the lake reacted. Light exploded outward in a ring, racing across the water and up the banks. Cassia stumbled back as the glow coalesced into a figure rising from the lake’s heart: tall, fluid, shifting like water caught in moonlight.

Not Jélere. But something of her. The figure’s voice was a whisper layered with echoes.

“Daughter of the Dance… you survived.”

Cassia’s throat tightened. “Where is my brother? Where is my village? What happened to Jélere?”

The figure flickered, its form rippling like disturbed water. “The Goddess is wounded. The veil is broken. The world has shifted from its place.”

Cassia stepped forward, fists clenched. “Tell me where she is.”

The spirit hesitated: or perhaps the water simply trembled. “She is falling.”

Cassia’s heart lurched. “Falling where?”

Before the spirit could answer, the trees behind her shuddered violently. A deep, guttural growl rolled through the clearing, vibrating the ground beneath her feet. Cassia spun, pulse hammering. Something massive moved between the trunks, too tall for a wolf, too broad for a bear, its silhouette wrong in ways her mind refused to accept. The stench of rot hit her like a blow.

The spirit’s voice sharpened. “Run.”

Cassia didn’t hesitate. She bolted toward the far side of the clearing, branches whipping at her arms as the creature crashed after her, each footfall shaking the earth. The path ahead twisted wildly, but she didn’t dare slow down. Behind her, the monster roared a sound like tearing wood and drowning screams.