The clock struck the hour, but the hands didn't move.
Lyra woke with a start, a thin layer of sweat clinging to her skin. The dream was still fresh — too fresh, as if it had seeped into her very bones. She could still smell the damp earth and the cold stone beneath her fingertips, taste the sharpness of a name she couldn't place. The dream had become more than a memory; it felt like something she had lived. Hadn't she?
Sitting up in her small, modest bed, she glanced around her room. The familiar sight of cracked wallpaper, cluttered bookshelves, and the soft glow of the moonlight coming through the window reassured her. It's just a dream, she told herself. Nothing more.
But then her gaze fell on the journal beside her, and her heart skipped a beat.
She didn't remember writing it. The pages were filled with hurried, ink-stained scribbles. And at the very back, a drawing that made her stomach twist: a castle. A sprawling, crumbling thing, with twisted spires and eyes that seemed to stare back at her.
In the corner of the page was a line in a language she didn't recognize, yet understood entirely. It was as if the words were meant for her — meant to awaken something inside her.
"We return to where we were broken."
The room felt colder now, the air heavy with an invisible weight. Lyra shuddered and closed the journal, but the image of the castle refused to leave her. She had seen it before — in the dream. She had walked its halls. Felt its heart beating beneath the floorboards. And there, waiting for her, was a figure.
A boy. A stranger with eyes as familiar as her own.
Coren.
The name burned in her chest, a spark igniting a fire she couldn't understand. She hadn't told anyone about her dreams — not the details, not the connection to the figure. Who would believe her? And yet, here she was, waking from a vision of someone who didn't belong in her world.
But what if he did? What if she was supposed to find him?