Chapter Two: Awakening

I did not wake as mortals do.

There was no slow drift from sleep, no hazy stretch of consciousness meeting reality. There was only nothingness—cold, vast, endless. And then, suddenly, there was everything.

Light burst behind my closed eyes, not warm and golden like the sun, but sharp and electric, searing through my mind as though I had been struck by lightning. My lungs burned. My skin ached. My body, unfamiliar and fragile, felt too heavy for the space it occupied.

I gasped.

Air filled my chest in a violent rush, an unfamiliar, painful sensation. My first breath. My first tether to this world. My throat convulsed, my body rejecting the sensation as if I had never been meant to breathe at all.

I was falling.

The wind roared past me, cold and biting, tearing at my skin. I had no wings to slow my descent, no power to stop what was happening. I plummeted through the sky, the stars above shrinking, the land below rushing toward me with terrifying speed.

Was this how the gods delivered me?

Through freefall? Through terror?

Clouds parted, revealing a vast expanse below—a land shaped by rivers of molten gold, forests so ancient their canopies swallowed the sky, mountains that jutted like jagged teeth from the earth. It was beautiful. It was endless.

And I was going to crash into it.

Panic clawed at me, but my body refused to move. I was weightless and powerless, a soul flung from the heavens with no control over her fate. The world blurred, shadows stretching, light bending—

And then, at the last moment, the fall stopped.

Not with a violent impact, not with the crushing force I had expected.

But with a whisper.

I landed on something impossibly soft, the sensation both alien and familiar all at once. It wasn't earth, wasn't stone—wasn't real. I floated in the space between existence and oblivion, caught in an invisible embrace that held me aloft.

A voice.

Low, commanding, laced with an ethereal hum that sent chills down my spine.

"She has arrived."

The presence of another being coiled around me, immense and unfathomable, neither solid nor spectral. I wanted to see it—to understand it—but I could not lift my head.

"She does not stir." Another voice, softer than the first. Feminine, patient, edged with curiosity.

"She is new."

The first voice again, heavier this time, like thunder waiting to break.

I struggled to open my eyes, but my body resisted. My limbs were numb, my fingers unresponsive. I felt unfinished, as if my form had been shaped but not yet fully claimed.

The voices spoke again, but this time, they were not speaking to each other.

They were speaking to me.

"Wake."

The command struck something deep within me, and I gasped again, my chest rising in a desperate attempt to obey. My fingers twitched. My lips parted. My eyes—

They opened.

The world erupted into existence around me, too vivid, too sharp. I flinched at the assault of colors, of shapes that were too real, too close. I had never seen before, yet my mind understood what it was perceiving.

I was lying in a vast glade, the sky above an impossible shade of violet, thick with stars that did not belong to any constellation I recognized. Bioluminescent flowers pulsed with soft blue light, and water, dark as ink, shimmered with silver reflections.

And then, I saw them.

The beings who had spoken.

They stood above me, not gods, not mortals, but something in between. Seven figures, cloaked in shadow and starlight, their features obscured by a mist that moved unnaturally, as if it breathed with them.

The Demi-Gods.

The ones who had pleaded with the gods for a solution.

The ones who had created me.

I should have feared them. Should have felt reverence, or confusion, or something beyond the raw, aching sensation blooming in my chest.

But all I felt was emptiness.

Like I had been born missing something.

Like I had been sent here incomplete.

"She is looking at us," one of them murmured, their voice layered with something unreadable.

"She is aware," another corrected.

"Does she understand?"

The question hung in the air, thick with expectation.

I parted my lips, tasting the cool night air, feeling the unfamiliar weight of a body that did not yet feel like my own. I had a voice—I knew I did. But using it felt as foreign as breathing had.

I swallowed. My throat burned.

Then, hoarse and unsteady, I spoke my first word.

"Where?"

A silence followed, long and deliberate.

Then the tallest of them stepped forward. The mist around him receded slightly, revealing eyes that burned like dying stars, gold rimmed with crimson. He knelt before me, his presence pressing against my consciousness like an undeniable force.

"You are where you were meant to be," he said.

His voice sent a shiver down my spine.

I licked my lips, my tongue dry and slow. "Who—?"

"The Vessel," he interrupted. "That is what you are."

The words struck something deep within me, a truth that should have belonged to me, yet felt distant, just out of reach.

The Vessel.

A tool. A bond. A solution to a world fractured by war.

A mate.

A mate to seven rulers I had never met.

I did not know them. I did not know myself.

But the moment the title left his lips, I felt it.

A shift.

A pull.

Something deeper than instinct. More primal than reason. A tether that coiled in my chest, weaving through the very core of my being, tying me to something—someone—far beyond this glade.

Not just one.

Seven.

My stomach clenched, and a sharp pain flared through my chest, as if invisible threads had tightened around my ribs. My breathing grew ragged.

The demi-gods exchanged glances.

"It has begun," one of them murmured.

I clutched my chest, barely understanding the wrongness curling inside me.

"What's… happening?" I whispered.

The golden-eyed demi-god studied me, his gaze sharp, measuring. "The bonds," he said simply. "You are feeling them."

I shuddered. I did not know what it meant. I did not know what I was.

But as the pain twisted into something more, something deeper, I realized one thing with certainty.

I was not alone.

Something waited for me.

Seven souls, tied to mine.

And whether I wanted them or not, I would have to face them.