Sleep takes me then.
True sleep.
A persistent nudge presses into my side, dragging me toward consciousness. I rouse just enough to peel my arm off the ground and swat it away, the motion sluggish and poorly aimed.
The reprieve is brief. The contact returns in the form of a wet nose pressing insistently into my cheek, a hot huff of breath fanning across my face. My lashes part to a blur of white looming above me, haloed in a dark red haze.
Disoriented, I decide it’s another figment—a remnant of the visions—but when I reach up to shove it away, my fingers tangle in thick, coarse fur.
Real.
A low groan drags from my throat as I shove its face aside. My hand slips halfway through the motion, strength bleeding out too fast to follow through.
“S-shew—go,” I manage, the words fraying as they leave me.
A moment's peace is granted.
Or it is until teeth clamp onto my pant leg, followed by a sharp tug that drags me across the rough ground. I try to wrench free, delivering a weak kick that barely connects.
The effort drains what little strength I have left, and my head lolls to the side, my vision dimming as sleep comes to claim me once again.
When I surface, it’s to the wrong sky. The full moon hangs low, already descending, and no light breaks the horizon. No sun. And the stars… There are gaps where balls of light should be, but they’re missing from the night’s sky.
Memory fractures through the fog in my mind—the Starfall, the heat, Kahill.
Conflicting emotions wage war in my chest. Lazreth’s actions at the last second saved me, but neither of us would have been there had he not broken through Kahill’s hold. And there’s no telling what Lazreth would have done to me had the star not chosen that exact place to fall.
Is it possible they survived?
My heart says yes. Reason tells me no, considering I barely did.
The thought fractures as my stomach turns, a sharp heave catching in my throat.
“Good God… what is that bloody smell?”
The scent of apples overwhelms my senses. When I force my eyes open and take in my surroundings, I realize I’m being dragged beneath dead trees through an orchard. Most of the fruit I pass is shriveled and rotting.
Leaning up as much as possible, I study the creature latched onto my leg.
“So not a ghost.” I tilt my head as I take his markings and size. He’s large and broad through the shoulders with shorter, dense fur. Imposing, with a stout frame and wider head and muzzle. A wolf, but not one who should still exist on this plane, seeing as the species went extinct ages ago.
“I’m awake. You can stop.”
He slows, then stills. His jaws release my leg, and he takes a few measured steps back. We lock eyes and hold. An intelligence shines out of his ice-blue irises, suggesting he may be much more than he might seem.
“You can understand me?”
He scrapes a paw through the dirt and lowers his head. My gaze leaves his face to take in the impression crisscrossing randomly along his fur. Lines as if he’d previously been bound.
After a beat, he turns his head, staring off in the direction he’d been dragging me.
A moan spills past my lips as I push myself upright. Every part of my body rebels against any type of movement. I ache in places I shouldn’t, but also, there are no visible wounds or evidence of what I suffered earlier.
It’s as if the star stripped something from me while it burned.
The wolf circles me, wary, but not nearly enough for my liking. I track him as he moves, each step measured, testing. He licks his nose, edges closer, then nudges my shoulder.
“You want me to get up?”
