Christopher's journal turns heavier here. What began as shared silence and strange dreams now becomes a conversation that neither of them can ignore. The entries grow closer, more personal, and what is spoken cannot be unsaid.
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James had been muttering all morning, each stone underfoot another excuse to complain. The guide pressed on ahead, unfazed, but Andrea's patience snapped. She bit her lip, quickened her pace, and slipped away from him.
When she drew level with me, her smile was polite, too polished to be casual. I wondered if it was simply to escape her husband's moaning, or if her steps toward me were something else entirely.
For a while we walked in silence, boots crunching in rhythm. Then she glanced at me sidelong, her words careful.
"Do you often write while you travel? Or is it only on journeys like this?"
Her tone was light, but I knew what she meant. She wasn't asking about the journal. She was circling the dream.
I tightened my grip on the pen I carried and met her gaze. "No riddles, Andrea. You saw me."
She faltered, nearly missing a step. Her eyes widened, but she did not deny it. Instead, she drew a slow breath and whispered, "So it wasn't only me."
I nodded, keeping my voice low. "This place is drawing us in. I don't know why. Do you?"
Her hand went to her stomach, fingers resting lightly as though to shield it. Her voice dropped, almost lost to the wind. "Not me. The pull is for the one inside me."
I stopped walking. "Inside you?"
She hesitated, then pressed her lips together, resolve overtaking fear. "I know you might not understand this, but I am two months pregnant. Yet the way I feel..." She shook her head. "It's as though I am five. I feel the stirrings already and too soon."
Her eyes flicked back toward James, still trudging ahead, oblivious. "He doesn't know. He hasn't noticed. I wanted to wait until I understood what was happening before I told him. Because right now... it frightens me."
The weight of her confession lingered between us. I forced my voice steady. "The dreams... the desert... the silence... they are leading us. To the Pale Expanse."
Her brow furrowed. "What is there?"
I lowered my tone, as if the trees themselves might be listening. "A place whispered about, though always as rumor. The Sepulcher of Echoes. But rumors do not live without a seed of truth. And I fear we are already standing on its path."
Andrea held my eyes, her hand still resting on her belly. When she spoke again, her voice was even softer, almost trembling.
"It is not the first time I dreamed of the ice desert. It started just over a month ago, when I found out I was pregnant."
Her words sank into me like ice and fire at once. The forest was still, the trail bending ahead into shadow. Then I saw it.
The leaves above us shivered though no wind stirred. Their green faded to molten gold, glyphs etched themselves in living veins, and one by one they loosened, drifting down in slow spirals. They fell around us like a benediction, brushing our shoulders, our packs, dissolving into ash before they touched the earth.
James trudged ahead, blind to it. The guide called for patience, her voice sharp and practical. But Andrea stood transfixed, her hand at her belly, and I stood with her. Only we saw. Only we knew.
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Andrea's words shake Christopher, but it is the forest itself that seals her confession. The golden leaves and the glyphs are not illusions to him. They are proof that what is stirring is no accident, no dream to be dismissed.
He does not understand why he sees these things, only that Heaven chooses to show him. Not to break him, but to remind him that none of this happens outside of design.