Every journey begins with a lie, and the lie is this: that the traveler knows where they are going.
They never do. Ask the ones who arrived, and they will tell you, if they are honest, that the destination they reached was never the one they packed for. A being sets out toward power and arrives at grief. Sets out toward vengeance and arrives at a family. Sets out toward a simple answer and arrives, years later, at a door in the dark that no map ever mentioned, wondering how the road knew them better than they knew themselves.
The road decides more than the traveler does, and many arrive at places they never once imagined, carrying selves they would not have recognized when they began.
