When Elaria opened her eyes, the world remembered her too slowly.

Light bled across her vision in trembling shards, each one showing a different sky — blue, then gold, then silver, then a void without stars. The air tasted like dust and rain, and beneath her hands, the ground pulsed faintly, as if she were lying on the skin of something still alive.

She did not know where she was.

The Vale was gone.

The mountains were gone.

Even the sun seemed to have forgotten how to rise the same way ...