Scarlett’s POV

Darkness takes me.

Not the soft, drifting kind. This is violent. It yanks me under like a riptide, dragging my consciousness through layers of heat and memory until my body no longer exists.

I am falling.

Then I am standing.

The ground beneath my bare feet is smooth stone, warm and faintly glowing, etched with symbols I somehow recognize even though I have never learned them. The air hums with power—old, patient, watching. It presses against my skin like a held ...