Chapter 1
“No!” I hear, as I lay on a grassy edge lining a beach. My head rings and I squint my eyes shut. The unbearable green light is still visible behind my closed lids, but soon, it begins to fade. I push myself up, rubbing my temple where I hit my head on a rock. I have no time to be in shock, to question what has just happened to me. Instead, I lean my back against a tree and catch my breath. The woman on the beach curses and throws a rock into the water with a loud grunt.
“No!” She screams again as the green orb finally collapses into itself, disappearing completely. The girl clutches a black helmet before tossing it aggressively onto the sand below. She falls to her knees with a huff, staring longingly over the water.
I groan at the dissipating pain fluttering across my forehead. I reach up to rub some of the tension away, only to find blood on my fingers as I lower my hand.
“Shit,” I say under a long exhale. I need medical attention. My brain rushes as fast as it can, but everything is so foggy. Where am I? I’ve never seen this lake before. To my left sits a small cottage, smoke billowing out through a chimney. I glance around, though the motion dizzies my head, and see nothing else. Nobody else. Just this woman and this house and the lingering fear that something is terribly wrong. My gut sinks deep in my stomach. I want to go home.
“Where am I?” I call out to the girl. At first, she ignores me, her head dropped low to the ground as she clutches sand in her fists. Her short hair is dampened with sweat and when she turns around I see her face is flushed red. From anger or from sadness, I can’t tell. She clenches her jaw, the muscles of her face clearly visible under her pale skin.
“You brought yourself here and you don’t know where you are?” She asks, her words bitter and stinging, her brows twisted in aggression.
“No, I don’t know where I am. Why are you so mad?”
“Because that was my only shot!” The girl shouts back, rising to her feet, She locks eyes on mine, her breath rapid. She points behind her toward the lake. “If I’d known someone would be opening the bridge, I would have been ready to escape.”
“Bridge?”
She rolls her eyes with a scoff, twisting on her heels before pacing in small circles over the grainy sand.
“Why are you pretending not to know anything? You have to know at least something to send yourself here. Where are you from?”
“Sanctum,” I respond, unsure of how to proceed.
“So you should remember how you got here,” she says.
“Yeah, I remember, but I don’t understand,” I try to explain. Fear begins to billow up as I wonder why she’s so stuck on this. Am I in danger? Is it bad that I’m here? I curse my curiosity that led me here and regret ever messing with that notebook.
The girl's face softens and shifts into pity. She walks over to me and kneels in front of me, our faces close enough that I can feel her breath on my skin. I notice her eyes are inexplicably caring - a complete turn around from the girl she was just moments ago.
“Tell me everything,” she says. “Like why did you open the bridge?”
“I-” I begin, struggling to put together a coherent sentence. How can I explain something I don’t understand myself? I shake my head. “I don’t know. I just-” I sigh. “Things were getting really bad at home. I managed to escape as they were herding us all into the palace. Ever since the people from Earth arrived, things have been heating up. I knew something was off so I ran away.”
The girl watches me as I speak, her brows tilted in concern.
“I stumbled upon this little house and found a journal with all these crazy theories. About an anomaly. Codes, hidden messages, and at the end, what looked like some sort of password. I just - entered it.” I shrug, feeling stupid at my childlike curiosity. I should have never left Sanctum. “I didn’t think it would actually work.”
The girl watches me for a moment, her eyes paused on mine. Her lips settle into a small frown which makes my heart sink. I don’t need her to say it to know that I’m probably stuck here now. The look of desperation on her face when that green orb disappeared… What have I done?
“Well,” she says behind a trying smile before standing and offering a hand. “Why don’t you come up to the house. I’ll take a look at that cut,” she says, motioning toward my forehead. “My name is Hope.”
“Mallory,” I respond, taking her hand and pulling myself up.
She smiles at me, though there’s a deep, unmistakable sadness in her eyes. We walk side by side to the house.
“How long have you been here?” I ask.
Hope looks down and takes a long breath in, as if bracing herself to tell me bad news.
“No need to rush,” she says. “We have all the time in the world to get to know each other.”