Chapter 1
The forest was Eve's choice. Not a sanctuary from a broken world, but a refuge for a broken self. Her solitude was a carefully constructed fortress, its routines the steady rhythm that kept her peculiar brand of reality in check. She knew her body was a cage, one she walked with caution, carefully suppressing the starlit patterns that lay just beneath her skin. They had been with her since birth, an incandescent map of constellations that pulsed with her heartbeat, a secret she had protected fiercely.
Her peace was a delicate facade. It lay in the quiet honesty of the forest—the predictable rustling of the canopy, the changing patterns of sunlight, the still, ancient air. Here, she could pretend the light she contained was simply another illusion of the wilderness, a trick of the dappled light. But today, her control felt as fragile as glass..
A low, insistent hum, a vibration she had felt since childhood, had grown into a roar, a resonant pull deep in her chest that felt less like a vibration and more like a name being spoken. It tore her from her familiar path and drew her towards the heart of the trees, towards a source she had spent a lifetime avoiding.
There, in a small, hushed clearing, stood the ancient oak. Its bark was a canvas of gnarled, weathered history, etched with runes that seemed to drink the light around them. As the hum reached a fever pitch, the patterns on her skin, which she had so diligently controlled, began to pulse with a rebellious, hungry intensity. It was a familiar, terrifying surrender.
With a gasp, she stumbled back, her hand flying to her chest, where the light rippled from her collarbone, up her throat, and across her cheeks. It was a beautiful, terrifying betrayal of her control. Her constellations flared in perfect, incandescent sync with the runes on the oak's bark, a mirror held up to her deepest secret. A soundless chime, felt in her bones, echoed through the grove, and the tree responded.
From the glowing runes, a swarm of brilliant, gossamer particles—like fireflies of pure starlight—floated into the air. They danced between her and the awakening tree, a luminous tapestry woven from her deepest secret and the forest's forgotten past. Her life of controlled quiet was over. The forest's forgotten secret, and her own, had finally met. The first whisper of a deeper, more dangerous story had just begun.