Their hands dig into me. It's as if they're all trying to crawl inside me at once.

I can't stop them and they keep coming and coming and coming until I drown under them.

I wake to the sound of wind rushing through the trees. I'm on my back, water swirling around my toes. The earth feels different. Soggy. Soft. Smooth.

I try to open my eyes but the bright sun blinds me, sending sharp daggers of pain deep into my head. The rest of my body screams in pain as well and I let out a low moan.

For a while I just lie there. Breathing, remembering my dream and allowing the guilt of losing Jed to wash over me. I want to curl in on myself, to tear at my hair. But my body hurts too much and so I let the water tickle my feet, let the sun warm my cheek, let my body stop its throbbing. The air through the trees is calming, soothing, and I almost slip back into nothingness, grateful to forget about the Forest and Jed and hope and the Unconsecrated and my dream.

The sound of someone digging sifts through my head. The sound of a spade breaking through a root, burying itself into the soft earth, being pulled out again.

It's a familiar sound and makes me smile. Harvest season. Time to celebrate the sun and spring.

The sound grows closer and its repetition joins the rhythm of the air through the trees like a lullaby.

A shadow falls over my face and I open my eyes just in time to see a man standing over me with a shovel in his hands. He raises the blade above his head.

On instinct I roll to my right. The shovel misses my throat and buries itself in the sand where my neck used to be.

The man stands there slightly off balance, his blade buried very deep in the sand.

I fall back on my heels and as he yanks against the handle I raise my hands. “Wait, wait!” I shout at him, and he stops. His grip loosens and he looks at me with an odd and curious expression.

“You're …” He pauses. “You're not dead,” he finally says.

“I would have been, had you had your way,” I say. I keep my hands up and start to scoot away from him.

Something past his shoulder catches my eye—an Unconsecrated woman with stringy hair is lurching at his back. “Watch out!” I yell. He turns and decapitates her with a practiced stroke.

She falls to the ground slowly.

He returns his gaze to me and starts to speak but his words don't penetrate my haze. I'm suddenly dizzy as I take in the world around me. At the expanse of water stretching out forever beside me.

“The ocean,” I whisper. And then the night before breaks fresh into my mind again. “Jed,” I gasp.

I stand, wobble and then start to run down the beach, examining the bodies washed ashore.