You wake gasping.

Your heart slams against your ribs like a caged animal. Your sheets are soaked with sweat, twisted around your legs as if you’d been running in your sleep. The thin morning light filtering through your window feels wrong—too bright, too real after the purple darkness that still clings to the edges of your vision.

You sit up, pressing your palms against your eyes until you see stars. Trying to hold onto the dream. Trying to make sense of it.

Faces. There were faces. A woman in midnight blue, her voice echoing from somewhere impossible. A man drowning in gold, his smile too wide. Another woman, wrapped in vines, watching you with knowing eyes as the blade fell—

The images scatter like startled birds. Already fading. Already becoming smoke.

But one thing remains. Burned into your mind like a brand.

The gem. Purple light, dying. Shadows rushing in. And a reflection—your reflection—but older. Harder. A warrior’s face where a child’s should be.

You touch your chest, half-expecting to find a wound there. Your fingers find only skin, and beneath it, your heartbeat finally beginning to slow.

It was just a dream.

It was just a dream.

A knock at the door makes you flinch.

“Are you awake?” The voice is familiar—one of the caretakers, though you can’t place which one through the fog in your head. “The ceremony begins at dawn. You need to prepare.”

The ceremony. Your coming of age. The day you choose your path.

You’ve waited your whole life for this. Every gem-born child has. It’s supposed to be the most important day of your existence—the moment you step out of childhood and into purpose.

So why does it feel like something else entirely? Why does it feel like an ending instead of a beginning?

You swing your legs out of bed. Your feet touch the cold stone floor, and the last wisps of the dream dissolve.

But as you stand, you catch your reflection in the small mirror on the wall. Just for an instant—a flicker, a trick of the early light—you see someone else looking back.

Someone older. Someone who has seen terrible things.

Someone who knows what’s coming.

Then you blink, and it’s just you again. Young. Uncertain. Standing on the threshold of a day that will change everything.

The knocking comes again, more insistent.

“Coming,” you call out, and your voice sounds strange in your own ears.

You reach for your clothes.

The day begins.