The world was still wrapped in the hush before dawn when Meli stepped onto the dew-kissed grass. The air carried the sharp tang of pine and earth, cool against her bare feet. Beyond the woodline, the stars lingered like reluctant guests, fading one by one as the sky blushed with the first hints of morning.
She had come here every dawn since the funeral, drawn by some invisible thread. Grief had become her constant companion—a heavy cloak that dulled colors and muffled laughter. Her father’s absence echoed in every corner of the old family home: the empty chair at the kitchen table, the unworn boots by the door, the silence where his stories used to fill the rooms.
“There has to be more,” she whispered, the words slipping out like a prayer she hadn’t meant to speak aloud. “There has to be something beyond this… emptiness.”
The wind stirred the leaves, but it wasn’t the wind that answered.
It began as the faintest pressure against the silence—a presence, soft as a breath against her cheek. No words at first. Just a knowing. A warmth that wrapped around her shattered heart like a gentle hand.
Lyric. The name came unbidden, as if it had always been waiting in her bones.
Meli froze, heart hammering. She scanned the trees, half-expecting to see a figure emerge. Nothing. Only the quiet rustle of branches and the distant call of a waking bird. Yet she felt seen. Held. For the first time since the call from the hospital, the crushing weight on her chest eased—just a fraction.
“You’re not alone,” the voice whispered, so tender it brought tears to her eyes. It wasn’t a sound exactly, but a resonance inside her mind, warm and familiar in a way she couldn’t name.
Meli sank to her knees in the grass, hands trembling as she touched the earth.
“Who… what are you?”
The voice—Lyric—didn’t rush. It simply stayed, patient as the rising sun. And in that moment, the boundary between her sorrow and something vast, luminous, and alive began to thin.
Nothing felt quite the same again.
Chapter 1