Page 2 of Touch of Oblivion (Woven in Time #1)

Unknown

I ’m ripped from the dark.

Sound rushes in, low and terrible like the groan of a world breaking open from within.

It rolls beneath me through the ground in shuddering waves, deep enough to rattle my bones and stir something hollow in my chest. A weight settles in my limbs, breathless and wrong, as if I’ve woken inside the final exhale of a dying being.

It doesn’t belong to me, yet it moves within me, ancient and undeniable. A presence that feels older than time and far too aware of me .

Then there’s light, fierce and splintered, jarring me out of my thoughts.

It sears behind my closed eyes in violent bursts, too bright to risk opening. It lashes and cuts unnaturally .

A shriek cracks through the roar of swirling wind and something static, sharp with panic. Footsteps thunder past me, close and stumbling. Something slams into my ribs and I gasp at the sharp impact, folding my body in on itself as pain blooms across my side.

“Gods, what is she doing in the middle of a battlefield?” a deep, trembling voice asks.

I pull in a shuddering breath as another exclaims, “She’s alive!”

“Forget her, man, they’re coming! We can’t fight against magic with guns.”

Magic. The word rises within me, familiar and foreign all at once.

Their fear crackles through the air and a part of me answers, trembling with warning.

The real danger is coming this way.

I hear the vibrations of fleeing steps and the uneven, ragged breath from one of them that lingers.

“No, please…” I manage to whisper through the pain that flares with each inhale.

I try to open my eyes to see where I am and who I’m asking for help, but the light sears. Instinctively, I slam my eyelids closed again.

I feel helpless to a world I don’t know and beings that I can’t see.

“I can’t,” the trembling voice answers, and I hear their steps shift. “I’m sorry, but they’ll catch up to me if I have to carry you.”

My brain is jumbled as I try to process this strange place and who he’s talking about. Who am I up against? Better yet, what .

“I don’t want to die,” he says, and I hear the guilt in his breath before his footsteps fade away.

Then, I’m alone.

Whatever caused them to flee grows closer to me.

I feel it with the shift of pressure in the air and the way my body begins to tremble.

I stay curled tightly against the ground, my limbs drawn inward like I can make myself disappear, like if I fold myself small enough, the looming threat won’t notice I’m here.

I try to remember–anything, even a name–but the void inside my mind remains quiet. There is no before…just this moment.

“Please,” I whisper into the crook of my arm, the word scraping out dry and cracked. I don’t know who I’m speaking to, but I press my palm firmly against the ground that seemed to whisper to me.

“Please…tell me where I am. Tell me how to survive it.”

There’s no answer.

Somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the ache of helplessness, a feeling flares. It’s a small but firm spark rising up, and I cling to it.

I want to live.

The thought is steady and low, curling through the hollow spaces inside me like roots pushing upwards toward light. I breathe through the pain, and slowly, my mind steadies–just enough to find that flicker of strength waiting beneath the fear.

I will survive this.

My lashes part slowly as I attempt one more time to take in the world around me.

They feel heavy as I force them open and squint.

Light pierces through in slivers, sharp and blinding.

Slowly I adjust and force them to remain open.

The world swims in a haze of broken colors.

Whites, reds, and black in the distance.

The ground shifts as my vision tries to settle, and for a moment, I wonder if the earth is still trembling or if it’s just me.

My hands dig into the dirt beneath me as I force myself to sit up.

A hiss slips from between my teeth as pain lances through my ribs with the shift.

My gaze drops to the red, angry mark blooming along my side.

It throbs in time with each breath, but I grit my teeth and push the pain down, lifting my head to take in the world around me.

Ash drifts in soft spirals, coating everything in sight like gray snow. Trees lie scattered in pieces. Some uprooted and others sliced clean through, as if the air itself turned to blades. Flames curl at the edges of charred stumps .

The words come to me too easily. Ash. Stump. Flame.

I know them, but I don’t know how. They feel borrowed, like fragments of someone else’s thoughts echoing in my skull. I turn them over in my mind as I stare across the wreckage, the silence filling me with unease.

Have I been here before?

In the distance untouched hills rise, soft and sweeping toward the clouds themselves. The foothills of the Appalachians, though I don’t know how I know that. The name just roots itself in my mind like everything else surfacing as I take it in.

It’s like my mind knows this place and the intricacies of it, but I don’t have the memory of experiencing any of it.

Bodies litter the ground, some twisted in ways that make my stomach churn. I don’t know what kind of battle happened here, or who fought in it, but my chest tightens at the sight of it.

All of it feels wrong.

My skin prickles, as if my body is trying to warn me.

A sound cracks in the distance and my head jerks toward it.

Heavy, deliberate footsteps, crunching over the broken terrain. They aren’t trying to be quiet or conceal their presence, as if they have nothing to fear.

As if they are what we should all be afraid of. A tingle runs down my spine as a chill seeps through my bones.

Their voices float toward me but I know it’s too late to run and hide, with the surrounding landscape withered down to nothing. My instincts scream at me to remain as small and unthreatening as possible.

“You think she could be one of us?”

A gruff voice answers. “My second was scouting the skies and reported that he watched her body be pushed up through the ground, like the earth was spitting her out.”

My brow pinches. Are they talking about me?

“She can’t be human. I’d be able to scent her blood by now.”

My breath stutters at that and I second-guess not attempting to flee.

I don’t understand their words entirely, but it’s clear they’re discussing me.

“She can’t be a big enough threat to require all four of us to investigate,” a fourth voice says, softer than the rest.

A threat? They seem to know more about me than I do, so I’d say I agree with him.

The footsteps and voices draw closer and I steel myself for them to come into view through the haze of smoke and ash.

They step through it one by one .

Four figures emerge–scarred, radiant, and terrifying. Yet…I don’t flinch. I merely observe each of the large men as they grow closer.

The first is a mountain built of pure muscle, his chest bare and streaked with soot. Scars cross his nose, his cheekbone, and the corner of his mouth like brutal punctuation. His eyes are molten gold and sharp as they bore into me. There’s a steadiness in him that radiates quiet strength.

The second is the opposite. He’s all lean elegance with winter-white hair, his bright blue eyes cutting through the haze like knives that somehow manage to gleam with mirth and intrigue.

His mouth curves in a way that makes me feel like a puzzle he's already halfway solved.

Even from here, I feel the shift in the world around him as his attention is piqued.

A third form drifts from the smoke, shadow clinging to his shoulders.

His steps are soft, and I’d likely miss them entirely if I didn’t feel the low vibrations of the ground through my body.

His hair is as dark as his shadows and contrast against his silver eyes.

My skin prickles where his gaze passes over me, swift, precise, unfeeling.

It doesn’t linger, as if he took one look and catalogued me away.

And the last...

There’s something ethereal about him, with a commanding presence like he was born to be obeyed.

Crimson eyes flick over me with a predatory glint, and by the end of his inspection, I know without a doubt that he’s the one who can scent human blood.

I may not be a human to hunt, but I feel like his prey nonetheless.

None of them speak as they draw to a stop ten feet away. They simply watch me.

I can feel the power that rolls from each of them in waves, and despite that, the dread that coiled within me a breath ago begins to loosen.

The broad one–the mountain–steps forward.

His movement is slow and measured, like he’s approaching something wild. He crouches down several feet away and cocks his head to the side, strands of his dark brown hair falling into his eyes with the move.

His voice is low and rough as he asks, “Do you remember how you got here?”

The question hits harder than I expect. It’s simple and direct, yet it exposes how lost I am. How alone.

I blink, unsure how to answer. My lips part, but no sound comes as I struggle to figure out how much to tell them. While I may not have an instinctual fear of them the way the rest of the humans made me feel like I should, I’m still uncertain whether I should make my vulnerabilities apparent.

He doesn’t rush me and he doesn’t move closer. He simply waits patiently, eyes glued to my face.

There’s something about his stillness that softens the jagged panic that pressed against my ribs in the moments before they appeared.

I should be afraid like the others who fled, but I’m not.

I don’t understand it, but for the first time since waking, I feel the earth thrumming beneath me in a soft, almost content wave of energy. As if my decision to stay here and face them head on was the correct path forward.

I shift slightly, raising my chin and looking behind him as the shadows pour from the one with silver eyes. They rush across the ground and toward me before I have a chance to process it.