Kyra blinked and looked up to see her mother gazing down at her, her face a silhouette, masked in a silver light, as light shined down from behind her. She had long golden hair, Kyra could see, and she could feel the kindness, the compassion, emanating from her, though her features were obscured. Her mother smiled down as she reached out a hand, her fingers long and smooth and slender.

“Kyra,” her mother whispered to her.

It was a whisper that reverberated throughout Kyra’s soul, the sound of a voice she had not realized she had been longing to hear her entire life. Kyra basked in the warmth of her mother’s love for the first time in her life, and it felt good. She felt as if a part of her, long missing, had been returned.

Kyra took her mother’s hand, shocked by her touch, like a bolt of lightning racing through her. She could feel the warmth spreading through her hand, then up her arm and her entire body. She slowly sat up as her mother pulled her gently, as if to embrace her.

“Kyra,” her mother said. “It is time. Time for you to know who I am. Time for you to know who you are.”

“Mother,” Kyra tried to respond.

But the words stuck in her throat. No sooner had she uttered them when suddenly, when she leaned forward to embrace her mother and reached out to feel nothing in her arms. As quickly as she had appeared, her mother had vanished.

Kyra blinked and saw a strange and exotic landscape before her, one she could not decipher, with twisted trees, burned branches—and yet no matter where she looked, her mother was nowhere to be found. She looked down and saw herself sitting at the edge of a cliff, about to fall off, the ocean waves crashing like mad beneath her.

“MOTHER!” she cried out.

Kyra sat up breathing hard as she woke, disoriented. Leo nudged his head on her lap, and it took her several moments to collect herself, to realize it had been a dream. It had been the most vivid dream of her life—more like a mystical encounter.

There came a gust of wind, followed by another, foreign sound. It sounded like footsteps approaching, crunching on the grass. Kyra instinctively tightened her grip on her staff and sat up, on alert.

Kyra blinked into the morning sun, realizing she’d slept here the entire night, shivering from the cold, from the ocean spray, and she tried to see. Dawn was breaking, spreading across the horizon, it still more dark than light, and as she blinked, struggling to see in the fading darkness, there slowly came into view the silhouette of a man. He was dressed in long robes, wore long hair, she could see that much, and he wielded a staff as he walked. He approached, and Kyra felt her heart slamming in her chest as she wondered.