Cold.
A cold that felt too deep, too quiet, too unnatural.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the sky—strange and vast, painted in silver. And then… the moon. I blinked, thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me. But no. It really was brighter than anything I had ever seen, shining like a fallen sun in the night sky. Beautiful… and terrifying.
I pushed my hand against the ground, feeling the unsettling stillness of the earth beneath me. That's when I noticed the river.
Long. Silent.
Still as a piece of glass.
It didn't move—not even a soft ripple. Even the air around me was frozen, holding its breath. The silence pressed against my ears until my heartbeat sounded loud enough to echo.
Where am I?
The question whispered in my mind before I could speak it aloud. The world felt unreal, like a dream I had been unwillingly thrown into.
A darker thought crawled in.
Did I… die? Is this where people end up after death?
I ran my hands across my arms, my legs, my neck—searching for pain, injury, anything. But my skin was untouched. Smooth. Perfectly normal. Except…
My eyes dropped to my collarbone.
The dragon mark.
My birthday mark.
It glowed faintly under the moonlight, the lines pulsing with a warmth I had never felt before. As if something ancient slept inside me… and it had finally woken up.
A wave of energy rolled through my body, soft but powerful enough to make me inhale sharply.
"What is this…?" I whispered, though my voice barely existed in this suffocating silence.
My legs felt weak, but I forced myself to stand. The landscape stretched far in every direction—silver sand, cold mountains, and that unmoving river. No birds. No wind. No life.
Just me.
And the mysterious, burning moon above.
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to calm the panic bubbling in my chest. Move. Look around. Understand where you are. One step. Then another. The ground crunched under my feet, the sound too loud compared to the dead stillness around me.
After walking for a while, something appeared in my peripheral vision.
A silhouette.
I froze.
Someone was standing a few meters away, half swallowed by the darkness. A tall figure wearing strange clothes—robes that flowed like shadows, with a silver crest I couldn't recognize.
"I have to go to him, who knows I might find out where this place is?" I tell this to myself and walk to that person...