Darkness. Then light. Then darkness again.
Kimberly didn't know where she was, only that the world around her kept shifting like sand in the wind.
One moment, she stood in a golden forest filled with warmth and melodious sounds.
The next, she was surrounded by silence, cold winds, and an eerie emptiness that made her chest feel hollow.
She turned and saw nothing, no Theo, no lantern, no temple. Just her… and the strange pulsing of a distant light.
'Where am I?' she thought, her voice echoing into the void.
Then, she heard a voice, low, calm, and familiar.
"Kimberly..."
She turned sharply.
"Theo?" she called out, but the voice didn't answer.
She took a step forward, and suddenly the ground beneath her shifted, cracking open.
She fell through, screaming, only to land softly in a place that looked like her old home.
The place she hadn't seen since she was a child.
The hallway was just as she remembered, narrow, quiet, filled with echoes of her past.
