Dirt infests my lungs as the king’s guards slam my body into the ground. Pain splinters through me—stiff bones cracking on impact. The air smells musty and dirt clings to my throat the way sand clings to wet skin. I cough hard, hacking, tasting earth on my tongue.

Still, it’s their laughter that rings loudest.

“Make yerself cozy, darlin’—this night may be yer last,” one of them says, yanking the blindfold from my eyes.

But I don’t open them. I won’t give them that.

Their voices fade as they walk away, teasing, tired. Their footsteps settle into the ground and disappear, leaving me bound and alone.

I test my body carefully. My legs are rigid, bound tight at the ankles by something rough and biting—rope, most likely—its fibers digging into my skin like needles. My chest aches, hollow and brittle from hunger. Cold metal circles my wrists. Chains. I pull at them, measuring the mercy I’ve been given. Not much. Perhaps the width of a dogwood leaf.

An icy wind rushes over my skin. It feels intentional. A warning.

Where have they left me?

Slowly, I open my eyes.

Moonlight spills faintly across a meadow.

A meadow?

The sight unsettles me more than stone walls ever could. Why here? Why leave me beneath open sky? The grass glimmers with dew, carrying the scent of damp earth and something faintly sweet. Night drains the green from the land, washing it into an eerie gray. Around me, ancient trees rise tall and proud, forming a wide, deliberate circle—as though they were placed, not grown.

There is only one opening in their ring. I know the gap reveals my fate.

Don’t look. Don’t even think about it.

My heart pounds so fiercely I feel each beat ripple through my veins. The wind strengthens, pressing against me, urging my chin upward. It isn’t a request. It is a pull—steady, insistent.

I resist as long as I can. Until I can’t.

Between the trees, I lift my gaze.

The full moon dominates the sky, swollen and luminous, nearly swallowing the darkness whole. Dark clouds crowd around it, heavy with the promise of thunder and lightning, watching me with terrible patience.

And there—etched into the space between storm and moon—stands the castle.

It rises from the ancient mountain whispered about only in legends meant to frighten children into obedience. Tall, narrow towers claw upward, devouring the moon’s light. Hundreds of black birds wheel around it, their wings cutting across the sky like scattered thoughts, like omens set loose.

My head falls forward.

“I can’t do this,” I whisper to the dirt.

Something inside me breaks. A single, ragged breath escapes, and then the tears come—hot and unstoppable. They blur my vision, tracing my cheek, slipping past my mouth, soaking into the soil beneath me. They taste more like earth than salt.

I wait for the emptiness to swallow me whole.

Instead, the meadow breathes.

The silence shifts—not empty, not cruel. Alive. I feel it through my spine, in the grass brushing my skin, in the soil pressing warm and steady against my tears. The wind softens, curling around me, no longer sharp but listening.

The land knows me.

My fears. My longings. The shape of every dream I never dared to speak.

The breeze stirs again, gentler now, carrying something ancient through leaf and bone and breath. No mouth forms the words, yet I hear them clearly, as if the earth itself leans close:

“I will help you escape.“