Page 63 of Sage Haven

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What he made sure I believed.

But these flowers…they seemed to tell a different story.

Or maybe they didn’t.

Maybe they were just another kind of warning.

A thousand questions crashed through me, splintering into pieces too sharp to hold.

I couldn’t stay here.

I couldn’t breathe.

I needed answers.

Or maybe I just needed to know if I was losing my mind.

So, I got dressed and I didn’t think. Didn’t hesitate.

I just ran back to the field.

The second my feet hit the dirt path, I felt it.

That twisting sense of inevitability.

Like I’d stepped into a current I couldn’t fight, and it was about to pull me somewhere dark.

By the time I reached the field, my chest was heaving.

Sweat beaded at my hairline and my pulse thudded hard against the base of my throat.

And then—I stopped.

The field.

The one that had once been alive.

Lush.

Untamed.

It was gone.

What was left was ruin.

The flowers had been ripped from the earth.

Uprooted and destroyed.

The soil churned into something raw and exposed.

A wound carved deep into the land itself.

Broken stems and crushed petals lay scattered like corpses across the dirt.

Forgotten and discarded.

Their bright colors faded to bruises in the dying light.

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