Autumn didn’t arrive like a slow, gentle fall of leaves.

It hit like hands closing around my spine, yanking me down into the molten heart of the world.

Everything bled into crimson—light so fierce it burned the edges of my sight until I wasn’t sure I even existed. I screamed, but the sound didn’t carry. There was no echo, no space for it to live. Only pressure, heavy and unyielding, pressing from every direction like the universe was deciding if I deserved to keep breathing.

Then the voice came.

“Child of moon and flame… you wake too soon.”

It wasn’t a sound. It was inside me—threading through bone, vibrating in...