The dream came softly, like mist slipping through cracks in stone. One moment I was lying in the quiet stillness of the Vale, the moonlight cooling my skin. The next, the world turned to fog, and the air thickened with silence.
I stood in a field of white ash. The sky was gray and unmoving, and the trees around me were nothing but charred shadows of what they had once been. The wind didn't blow. No birds sang. Even the air felt like it held its breath.
Then I saw him.
The cursed wizard.
He rose from the ash like smoke, his robes torn and scorched, his eyes glowing with something ancient and heavy. Not hate. Not anger. But warning.
"Luciana," he said, his voice cracking like firewood in flames.
I took a step back. My body remembered his pain. The last time I saw him, he had pulled me into his past—into the moment he was betrayed and cursed. I had barely survived it. And now, here he was again.
"Why are you here?" I asked. "What do you want from me now?"
