**SAGE POV**
Light.
That’s all there was at first. Endless blue-white light that burned and soothed at the same time. I couldn’t feel my body, couldn’t tell if I was falling or floating. The air…or whatever this was…hummed like it was alive, carrying the sound of a thousand whispers I couldn’t understand.
When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in Crescent Vale anymore.
I stood in the middle of a field made of light. Silver grass stretched as far as I could see, bending under a wind that didn’t exist. Above me, the sky wasn’t a sky…it was a sea of moons. Dozens of them, glowing and overlapping, their light bleeding into one another like waves.
Each one pulsed softly, as if breathing.
For a moment, I couldn’t move. My mind struggled to make sense of it all…the shimmer of the air, the quiet hu
