Lumina Brightglade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Lumina knelt at the forest's edge and opened the crystal book across her knees. Its pages caught the dawn and threw small rainbows onto the moss. She needed a map of the surviving glades before the blooming season ended, or her plan to crown a new queen would fail before it began. She pressed her palm to the cold pages and asked the book to show her what still lived. The crystal warmed. Faint lines rose inside it, threading toward a half-buried path she had walked as a child. At its far end stood the weathered footbridge and lichen-marked stones of an old graveyard, its glowing symbols flickering like a slow heartbeat. Each grave-mark, she realized, named a glade that had folded itself away to hide. Lumina copied every symbol with shaking fingers. By the time the sun cleared the trees, she held a true list of the sheltering places. She also held a colder truth. Some of the marks were fading even as she watched, and one had already gone dark.