Lena's scream never reached her ears. The moment she fell, sound itself seemed to vanish, replaced by a dense silence that pressed in on all sides. She wasn't tumbling through darkness—no, the space around her shimmered with colors she couldn't name, hues that flickered like dying stars. Gravity twisted and folded in on itself, sending her spiraling in ways her mind couldn't comprehend.
Then, as suddenly as the fall began, it ended.
Lena landed on solid ground—not with the bone-crushing impact she expected, but with a strange weightlessness, as if the earth beneath her was cushioning her descent. She gasped, pushing herself upright. The air was thick with the scent of something metallic and ancient.
She wasn't in the woods anymore.
The sky above her was a swirling mass of silver and violet, with constellations she didn't recognize burning brightly against the vast expanse. Towering spires of dark, crystalline rock jutted from the landscape, humming with energy. A river of liquid light snaked through the valley below, its glow casting elongated shadows across the land.
And standing before her, bathed in the strange radiance of this world, was a figure.
It was tall—inhumanly so—and cloaked in something that moved like smoke and silk. Its face was obscured, but its eyes, two piercing orbs of shifting gold, locked onto hers with an intensity that made her chest tighten.
"You came." The voice was the same as before, soft yet filled with an ancient weight. It wasn't spoken aloud, but rather echoed directly in her mind.
Lena swallowed hard, forcing herself to steady her breath. "I— I don't understand. Where am I?"
The figure tilted its head slightly, as if considering her question. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, it raised a hand. The very air around them rippled, and Lena felt something cold press against her skin. She looked down.
A blade.
It wasn't touching her—yet—but it hovered just above her heart, suspended in midair. The weapon was unlike anything she'd ever seen: forged from a metal that pulsed with veins of silver-blue light, its edge impossibly sharp.
"A double-edged sword that runs through the heart," the figure murmured. "One side to destroy, the other to reveal. You must choose which it will be."
Lena's breath hitched. Choose? She didn't even know what was happening. And yet, deep in her bones, she understood—this was no mere dream. No hallucination.
This was real.
And whatever choice she made… would change everything.