I heard it before I saw anything.
"Vivien."
The voice was feminine, soft yet strangely powerful, echoing inside my skull like a voice in the hollow of a cave.
Not Leika's voice, I was sure.
It wasn't loud, not even urgent, but it resonated through me with an authority that made the hair at the nape of my neck stand on end.
It sounded as though it came from everywhere at once—from the ground beneath my feet, from the air, from the pulse of my own heart.
I blinked, and the world had already changed.
I was no longer in my room. I stood in the middle of a vast expanse of white, a barren snowfield that stretched endlessly in all directions. The ground was layered thick with frost and ice, soft beneath my boots, while a mist swirled low to the earth, cloaking everything beyond a few paces.
There were no stars, no moon, no horizon, only the endless whiteness of snow and the curtain of mist that imprisoned me in its embrace.
