The first sensation that returned was weightlessness—Lynchie's body hovered in a pocket of silence too vast to be a room, too intimate to be the sky. There was warmth, a breathless hush, and a silver hum like dreaming stars. Then came the vertigo.
Her eyes snapped open to a world that looked stitched from dreams and skyfire.
Above her stretched a pale firmament that moved—not clouds, not heavens, but floating islands glowing with soft crystal roots. Suspended high above a chasm that spiraled with auroras, each isle pulsed with light, each tethered by golden lattice-bridges that defied wind and logic. A soft current of song wove through the air, though no mouth sang it.
This was the Academy of the Riftborne, she realized.
Not from memory, but from the dream that echoed still in her bones.
Below her—a dozen feet at least—hovered a platform that moved of its own volition. Crafted of pale starstone, it pulsed under her like it breathed, with faint glyphs forming and unforming in perfect silence. A circle of students stood, spaced like constellation points, each with a drifting light at their brow.
She was the last to arrive.
A voice rang out—not aloud, but within them.
> "The arrival soul has stabilized. Sequence calibrated. The Riftborne welcomes its stray echo."
And suddenly, the sky blinked. The students around her lowered their heads.
Lynchie staggered as her feet gently touched the starstone. The glyphs coiled beneath her heels. Her fingers ached with memory—not hers—and her lips burned as if she had whispered a word she didn't know.
Someone stepped forward. Robes the color of moonlight. Eyes ancient.
"I am Keeper Velein," the figure said aloud this time. "Warden of Transition. Your arrival was... unregistered. But not without precedent."
He held out a hand—not to shake, but to offer balance.
"You've been pulled here by resonance. You carry a mark yet to bloom."
Lynchie did not move. She did not yet know her name.
But she knew this was not the first time she had heard that voice. Not in this body. Not in this life.
And somewhere above, unnoticed by most, a singular star in the sky blinked twice—and did not return.