Chapter 41 The First Encounter

• The sky was a bruised gray, heavy with the weight of an impending storm. Lucy stood in the center of her rooftop greenhouse, surrounded by the lush, vibrant greens of her grandmother’s enchanted plants. The air was thick with the scent of growing things, a small oasis amid the frozen world outside. The ever-present chill from the snowstorm that had begun to sweep across Talawan a few hours ago barely seemed to reach the greenhouse, protected by the sigils carved into the stone walls and the carefully placed charms left behind by her grandmother. Despite the warmth of the room, however, a cold sense of unease pressed down on Lucy’s chest.
• She couldn’t explain it. The dream she’d had last night was still vivid in her mind—the visions of an endless, frozen wasteland, of distant figures marching toward her. There had been something about the dream that had felt almost prophetic. The winds outside howled louder, the snow whipping against the windows as if trying to get in, but Lucy didn’t dare move. The visions had been clearer this time, sharper, and they seemed to carry a warning, something she couldn’t quite put into words.
• Her fingers hovered over the delicate petals of a flower she had cultivated from the rare herbs within the Domain, a plant that seemed to defy the encroaching cold. It was a symbol of resistance—of life holding firm in the face of an unstoppable freeze. Yet Lucy felt the weight of a different kind of freeze settling within her, one not just from the world outside but from the isolation she had been battling within herself for so long.