Chapter One: The Fortieth Dawn
Mist curled low over the forest floor, weaving silver threads through the roots of ash and alder. Birds had long since learned not to sing here. Even the breeze dared not stir too loudly. Only the soft crunch of Elowen’s boots on damp earth disturbed the silence as she stepped into the glade.
The Lake lay ahead; a mirror of pale grey wrapped in veils of morning fog. It did not ripple. It did not breathe. It waited.
Elowen stopped at the shore as she had for thirty-nine mornings before. Her cloak was heavy with dew, her fingers cold, but her gaze remained locked on the water’s surface. She no longer wept. That had ended with the first seven days. Now there was only quiet. A quiet so deep it felt like prayer.
Aeric had died here.
They said he slipped, hit his head on the rocks. They said the storm had muddied the path. They said accidents happened.
But accidents did not leave bruises shaped like hands.
They buried him beneath the yew tree on the hill, far from the water’s edge. But Elowen had never stopped coming here. The villagers called it madness — her mourning too long, too deep, too strange. They whispered that the lake had poisoned her mind.
Perhaps it had.
For on the tenth morning, she began to see him.
A flicker at first. A shimmer of light in the shape of a man. Then more — the outline of shoulders, a smile she knew by heart. Always at dawn. Never a word. Just his reflection in the water, waiting as she waited. She had not dared speak.
But on the fortieth dawn, everything changed.
Elowen knelt at the water’s edge, her knees sinking into the soft moss. Her reflection hovered beside his, pale and hollow-eyed. She reached out, fingers brushing just above the glass-like surface. The lake did not stir.
“I’m still here,” she whispered, voice catching. “And I will come every day until you do more than haunt me. If there is truth beneath these waters, let it rise.”
The sun breached the edge of the trees. A slant of golden light spilled across the lake, and as it did—
Aeric opened his eyes.
Not the trick of water or wind. Not imagination.
His eyes — the exact hazel-green she remembered — found hers. His lips parted.
And then, finally, he spoke.
His voice came like breath across stillness. Not sound. Not echo. Something deeper.
“Thorne.”
The water quivered. Fog peeled back. Elowen’s breath caught in her throat.
“Thorne killed me.”
She stared, stricken. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
Before she could move, the reflection dissolved, the lake stilled, and all was silence once more.
Elowen rose slowly to her feet.
The name echoed in her mind like the toll of a bell.
Thorne.
And in that instant, she knew: the path ahead would not lead through courts or villages.
It would lead through the veil, into the land of spirits and shadows.
She would go.
She would find Thorne — even if it meant bartering with the dead.