There’s silence. For a long time, no one speaks.
All I feel is the fusion of my essence with theearth’s need. It sings through me like a low, living chord. It hums beneath my ribs, threads of its will winding into my spine.
I open to it, and it accepts me.
It does not speak, but I know it now.
The slow churn of its oceans.
The fault lines buried like old wounds.
The flickering chaos of the life it holds.
It pulses through me with the same rhythm that now beats in my chest.
“If she does find love,” the weary one says, “let us hope she can say goodbye to it.”
“The connection is stable,” the warm voice says. “Earth is clinging to her already. It has accepted her.”
The world exhales around me as the voices of the gods retreat with one final whisper.
“I do not know when the earth will call for you, Weaver, but it is my hope that you will enjoy the gift of life in the short time you are needed.”
Then my body is pulled, yanked through nothingness.
Creation unfolds around me. Planets spin and scatter. Stars scream as they are born and devoured. Light coils and bends as I fall through the seam between what was and what will be.
My consciousness shatters and reforms, again and again, until even the memory of the gods is gone.
Through it all, I feel a tether, unbreakable from itsanchor within me as it guides me to my home: the heart of the world that chose me.
A core, molten and alive, greets me not as a stranger, but as something long awaited. Its memories, scorched and fractured, whisper through me as I seep through its cracks.
I descend into the hush of stone, knowing nothing, and feelingeverything.
As I settle and the planet’s burning veins seal me in, I think, just for a moment, that I hear the earth weep.
Chapter 1
Unknown
I’m ripped from the dark.
Sound rushes in, low and terrible like the groan of a world breaking open from within. It rolls beneath me through the ground in shuddering waves, deep enough to rattle my bones and stir something hollow in my chest. A weight settles in my limbs, breathless and wrong, as if I’ve woken inside the final exhale of a dying being.
It doesn’t belong to me, yet it moves within me, ancient and undeniable. A presence that feels older than time and far too aware of me.
Then there’s light, fierce and splintered, jarring me out of my thoughts.
It sears behind my closed eyes in violent bursts, too bright to risk opening. It lashes and cuts unnaturally.
A shriek cracks through the roar of swirling wind and something static, sharp with panic. Footsteps thunder past me, close and stumbling. Something slams into my ribs and I gasp at the sharp impact, folding my body in on itself as pain blooms across my side.
“Gods, what is she doing in the middle of a battlefield?” a deep, trembling voice asks.
I pull in a shuddering breath as another exclaims, “She’s alive!”
“Forget her, man, they’re coming! We can’t fight against magic with guns.”
