The first thing I felt was the cold.
It seeped through my skin as I stirred awake, a sharp contrast to the warmth I remembered before sleep took me. The mossy bed I'd collapsed onto was damp now, the air dense and heavy, like it had rained without water. My eyes fluttered open slowly.
Gray twilight hovered in the sky, but it wasn't the same sky I'd known.
This place was... thinner. The colors stretched and flickered like oil on water. Trees loomed taller, their trunks pale as bone and hollow at the core, whispering when the wind passed through. Light pooled unnaturally around stones and roots, as though it gathered there on purpose.
I sat up slowly, rubbing my arms. My body ached, my legs stiff from the long trek, but something else tugged at me—deeper than sore muscles. An invisible thread pulling me forward. The forest wanted me to move.
The *Vale of Ancients* had accepted me.
I had crossed.
Somehow, the knowing settled in my bones.
