The shift from darkness to dim light was like being torn out of a dream she hadn’t realized she was in.

  Eleanor’s eyelids fluttered open. Her mind dragged behind her body, sluggish, tangled in something thick and formless. The weight of unconsciousness clung to her like cobwebs. Cold stone pressed against her back—uneven, unfamiliar. She inhaled sharply. The air was warm, too warm, but sharp with something metallic beneath the cloying incense.

  She wasn’t in her office. Not in her apartment.

  A spike of adrenaline cut through the haze.

  She pushed herself up—too fast. The world lurched sideways, nausea coiling in her gut. She sucked in a breath, fingers gripping the smooth surface beneath her. Stone. A slab. No, an altar. The realization hit like a slap, but before panic could take hold, flickering light pulled her gaze upward.

  The chamber around her loomed vast, the ceiling stretching into shadows. Thick columns spiraled upward, cut with symbols that made her eyes ache when she tried to focus on them. The walls weren’t just carved; they pulsed. The light within them shifted when she wasn’t looking directly at it.

  Her breath came uneven. The smell—incense, yes, but underneath it, something sharper. The air before a storm.

  Then came the voices.

  "Vas'thar elun morathi, eshka velun thonai..."

  The chant rolled through the space, thick as the stone itself. Eleanor flinched. The syllables didn’t just echo; they pressed. They had weight, a presence. She turned her head—figures in dark robes circled the altar, their faces swallowed by shadow. The rise and fall of their voices felt too seamless, as if the sound wasn’t coming from their throats but from the air itself.

  This isn’t real.

  She tried to push herself up again, but dizziness swam behind her eyes. She clenched her fists against the altar, grounding herself in something solid, something real.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  One of the figures stepped forward. Taller than the rest. He moved like gravity bent around him, pulling everything in. She didn’t want to look at him. But then she did, and his eyes—

  Glowing. Not with light, but with something older, something that watched with the patience of stone.

  "Do not be afraid."

  The voice wasn’t sound. It resonated—overlapping, layered, like too many voices speaking at once. It burrowed beneath her skin, into the hollow of her ribs.

  Her breath came shallow. "Where am I?"

  The man didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. "You are the Hero of Knowledge."

  A hollow, empty silence stretched between them. The words hung in the air, waiting for her to grasp them, to shape them into something that made sense.

  She let out a short, sharp breath. "That’s—no. No, you’ve got the wrong person. I’m just—" She shook her head, fingers tightening against the stone. "I’m just a historian."

  "You have more than knowledge, Eleanor Vance." The way he said her name sent something cold down her spine. "You see what others cannot. You understand what others have forgotten."

  A ripple passed through the room. A pulse. A shift in something unseen, but felt. The chanting swelled again, the syllables pressing deeper, and—

  She understood them.

  Not translation. Recognition.

  The realization sent a fresh jolt of panic through her. She knew this language. Not from any textbook, not from any lecture, but from somewhere else. From dreams she never remembered fully. From whispers in the back of her mind when she stared too long at old texts, at symbols that never quite made sense but felt familiar.

  No. That was impossible.

  "Summoned," she whispered, barely hearing her own voice. "Why?"

  The man—priest? Leader? Something else?—tilted his head, watching her like a puzzle he already knew the answer to. "The myths speak of a scholar from beyond the realms, one who will uncover the secret of the Twin Realms and restore the balance that has been lost."

  Her stomach twisted.

  No. No, no, no.

  She had spent her whole life running from this. From stories her father used to tell, from the impossible myths he whispered about fate and destiny and knowledge that should have stayed buried. She had spent years dismantling those stories, proving them to be nothing but elaborate tales meant to comfort people afraid of the unknown.

  And now?

  Now she was in one.

  She swallowed hard. "This isn’t happening."

  But the figures in the circle didn’t waver. The chanting didn’t stop. The man with the glowing eyes didn’t look away.

  This was real. And somehow, against all logic, all reason—

  She was at the center of it.