The first thing she noticed was the silence.

Not the peaceful kind—no. This silence listened back.

“You’re early,” the woman said.

Her eyes were open.

They were pale, almost colorless, reflecting the cold blue flowers packed tightly around her like waterlogged stars. She lay inside a wooden frame that resembled a coffin but felt too deliberate to be called one—carved symbols along the edges, old enough to forget their own meaning. Her hands were folded neatly over her chest, skin like porcelain left too long in moonlight.

“I wasn’t supposed to wake yet,” she continued calmly, as if this were a minor breach of etiquette. “Tell me—what year is it?”

The room smelled of damp earth and incense burned centuries ago. The blue blossoms beneath her hair pulsed faintly, breathing. Waiting.

“You shouldn’t have opened the door,” she said, tilting her head just enough for the gold ornaments in her hair to clink softly. Her mouth barely moved like two stuck pieces of meat from decades trying to move... “But now that you have…”

Her fingers twitched.

“Come closer,” *she whispered. * “If I am to rise, I should know whose hands freed me.”

And that’s where the story stops— with the door still open, the flowers beginning to wither, and the woman finally starting to sit up, as if she had all the time in the world...or in this new world she was about to see...