The first thing Magnolia felt was the cold.
It seeped into her bones, a biting numbness that made it hard to know where her skin ended and the void began. She opened her eyes and saw no stars, only a world swallowed in red mist and rising heat.
Flame licked at the edge of her vision.
But it wasn't fire that burned.
It was memory.
She stood in the middle of a blackened plain, the soil beneath her feet scorched and cracked like broken glass. The sky hung low and bloody, and every breath she took tasted of copper, ash, and regret.
She was alone.
But she wasn't.
Eyes watched her from the smoke.
She turned slowly. Shapes moved in the shadows, silent, slow, monstrous.
Then, one stepped forward.
A ghost. A woman. Hair braided in white cords, skin tattooed with runes lost to history. Her eyes were hollow, her mouth stitched shut with thread.
Another followed. Her chest bore a wound, gaping and black, but no blood flowed. She walked with her hands folded as if in prayer.
