Lyn watkins's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Lyn traces the newest mark on her wrist with her thumb, feeling the raised skin still tender from its arrival. Three weeks until the full moon. The pattern she's been tracking for months just broke, and she doesn't know why. She climbs the crooked steps to her cabin, pushing through the mist that clings to the warped slats. Inside, her walls are covered in sketches and measurements. Every symbol, every dream, mapped in careful rows by moon cycle. The sequence should repeat every six months. It always has. But this mark appeared early, out of order, burning itself onto her skin while she slept three nights ago. She pulls out her notes and starts measuring the new rune against the old ones. If the pattern broke, there has to be a reason. She just needs to find it. She spreads her diary open on the table, its purple cover worn at the edges from constant use. The pages are dense with ink — dates, sketches, measurements taken at precise intervals. She flips to the chart where she's tracked every rune's appearance. Six symbols, repeating. Six symbols that should have waited another three weeks. The new mark doesn't match any of them. It curves where the others angle, splits where they connect. She copies it carefully onto a fresh page, measuring the width of each line with a ruler. Outside, the large display board catches the morning light. She nailed it to the oak tree last spring so she could see the full sequence at once. Six columns, each moon cycle marked and dated. She pins a sketch of the new rune beside the others, stepping back to study it. The pattern is broken. The new symbol sits there like a crack in glass, and everything she thought she understood about getting home just became uncertain.