Three, two, one.
Go.
He threw himself into the void.
The air warped around him as the ground rushed closer, as though the world itself were bending beneath the sheer speed of his fall, and the figures surrounding him on his left, on his right soon became nothing more than blurred streaks, shapes swept along in the same inexorable descent. Some screamed, their voices stretched until they were no longer recognizable; others prayed under their breath, lips trembling, while a few remained frozen in absolute silence, their eyes wide, far too wide, unable to accept what was happening to them.
Then he activated it.
It was not a gesture, nor even a fully conscious decision, but rather an opening, as though something within him finally gave way, allowing a flow to pass through—one he did not understand, yet instinctively recognized.
The world changed.
The fall continued, but it lost its blind brutality, becoming instead a succession of precise sensations, almost too many to endure. The air no longer simply struck him, he could feel its variations, its resistance, the faintest currents sliding along his skin. The heartbeats around him overlapped, irregular, frantic, like an organic murmur vibrating through space. It seemed to him that he could hear the lights, perceive sounds as shifting forms bending and stretching between the falling bodies.
Beneath his feet, he found what he had been searching for without knowing he was searching at all.
A diffuse presence.
An energy that was not his, yet flowed everywhere, silent, constant.
He grasped it.
Or perhaps it allowed itself to be grasped.
He compressed it, forced it to condense beneath his heels, to yield to a will he did not fully understand, and at once his fall slowed, as though time itself had agreed to loosen its grip around him.
The ground still drew nearer, but the raw panic was gone, replaced by a controlled tension—fragile, always on the verge of breaking.
Around him, others attempted the same. Some succeeded with almost insolent ease, their descent becoming fluid, elegant, while others trembled, lost control, and tipped into unstable trajectories where the light beneath their feet flickered dangerously.
He adjusted, corrected, concentrated that unstable energy further, until he felt his muscles tighten under the strain.
The ground came.
His knees bent on impact, the force surging through his body, but he held, absorbing the shock in a short, controlled breath.
The silence that followed felt almost unreal.
For a moment, he did not move, suspended between two states, unable to believe he was still standing.
Then understanding came, slowly.
He had succeeded.
A surge of joy, raw and violent, began to rise within him, ready to burst—
And died instantly.
Something was wrong.
He felt it before he saw it.
The ground around him was covered in bodies.
Not a few isolated failures.
Not accidents.
Dozens.
Crushed figures, broken, their limbs twisted into impossible angles, their faces frozen in expressions that had nothing to do with surprise or pain—but with a fear too deep to be named.
He remained still, unable to look away.
One of the bodies moved.
Barely.
A tremor.
Then its pupils rolled slowly in their sockets to fix on him.
Cold climbed up his spine.
Another body turned its head.
Then another.
Then all of them.
The motion spread like a silent wave, accompanied by a wet, uneven cracking, as though joints resisted this return to movement.
They were looking at him.
A sound rose , something like an accumulation of incompatible noises, of rattling breaths, guttural groans, broken exhales, forming a cacophony that seemed to vibrate directly within his bones.
The light shifted.
Everything was washed in red.
The bodies began to rise.
Slowly.
Clumsily.
Some could not manage it entirely and dragged themselves forward, clinging to the others, their fingers sinking into dead flesh, their movements disjointed, grotesque, yet unstoppable.
They were coming toward him.
Kael tried to step back, but his body did not respond.
As though something had nailed him in place, forcing him to watch death approach him, inch by inch.
The first hand seized the hem of his trousers.
Then another.
Then several more.
He felt the pull, at first slight, then insistent, then impossible to resist.
He tried to struggle, but his balance was already failing, his legs giving way beneath him.
He fell and in an instant, they were upon him.
The weight crashed down, a shapeless mass of bodies pressing, piling, clutching, their fingers digging into his clothes, into his skin, pulling, tightening, crushing, biting.
The smell of blood filled everything. Rot flooded his senses.
He tried to breathe.
He couldn't. His vision blurred.
And, in the last instant of clarity left to him, he saw, above the writhing mass, a hooded figure—perfectly still, utterly stable in a world that was not—as though it did not belong to the scene, but observed it from somewhere beyond.
Then everything vanished.
—
Kael inhaled sharply, air rushing into his lungs with such force that he winced, as though breathing were something he had to relearn.
He lay there without moving, eyes open in the darkness, unable for several seconds to tell the difference between what he had just seen and what now surrounded him.
His heart was racing. Each beat echoed in his temples.
The same dream.
Again. Always.
He closed his eyes briefly, as if to push the images away, but they lingered, etched with unsettling clarity.
The fall.
The bodies.
The figure.
Death.
Night after night, the dream returned, sometimes fragmented, sometimes longer, but always the same at its core, always carrying that strange impression that he was not merely dreaming, but witnessing something.
He ran a hand over his damp face, then slowly sat up.
The warmth of the Roots welcomed him at once familiar, almost comforting despite its constant discomfort. The organic walls of his small hollow pulsed faintly, traced with greenish veins through which luminous sap flowed, casting a soft glow along the curved surfaces of his shelter.
He placed his feet on the ground.
A dream, he told himself at last.
Nothing more.
He didn't need this today.
Not today.
Today, the Watchers would descend.
Today, the Harvest would begin.
And for the first time in a long while, it was no longer the dream that occupied his thoughts, but something far more concrete, far more dangerous.
This year, he would take part in the Harvest.
No matter the cost.