Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
SANORA
Twenty-three Years Later
“I’m very serious. I wanted to smack the last one’s face!”
My mother’s laughter floated in from the kitchen just as I knelt on yet another overstuffed suitcase, trying to bully the zipper into submission. I packed a lot of clothes, and yet, they weren’t enough. “Can you believe it? Do you think I’m unlucky, too?”
Grunting, I bounced once on the lid of the bag, heard the zipper shift, and grinned. Victory.
“You’re going to ruin the bag,” Mother said, suddenly appearing in the doorway, arms folded and brows dipping like she’d walked into a crime scene.
“This isn’t even the worst of it.” I jerked my head towards the army of three already zipped, heaving suitcases standing guard by the wall. “This one’s just the stubborn runt.”
“You’re only staying for what? Three weeks? Four, max?”
“Twenty-eight days.”
“And you packed like you’re going to survive an apocalypse. Is all these—”
“Yes. Absolutely necessary. I’ve been collecting things for this trip for months, thank you very much.
Everything here is important.” With one final yank, I sealed the zipper and flopped onto the floor with a dramatic exhale.
“Besides, the tarot reading said I won’t die, but I’ll live unluckily, remember? ”
“Oh gods,” she muttered, already walking away. “Stop believing those things,” she snapped.
“Don’t mock it! Six different readers said the same thing. Six. Word for word, like they were reading a damn script. ‘Child, you’ll live a long life, but a very unlucky one.’ I mean—what the hell kind of fortune is that? I’d rather live short and lucky, honestly.”
“Stop believing those things,” Mother repeated from the living room. “You give them power when you believe them. That’s how omens work. Why would you even go there?”
I rolled onto my side, propping myself up. “Well, your only child is going to a freaking legendary cursed town, so forgive me for wanting a little reassurance from the universe.”
There was silence for a while.
She returned a moment later, crouching beside me, her face a mask of concern poorly hidden under a worn-out smile. It was always easy to read her. She wore her worry like makeup.
“Do you have to go there?” she asked quietly. “There are plenty of ways you can find things online these days. I’m sure if you look into your computer properly, you’ll find answers—”
“Mother.” I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing gently. “Online is full of...dung. It’s my thesis and I need to do proper research. I’ve waited years to do this research and I finally have the chance. No amount of online digging is going to cut it. I have to be there. See it. Touch it.”
Her eyes searched mine, still reluctant. “Isn’t anyone else going with you?”
I shook my head. “No. Nobody signed up for cursed-town adventures, unfortunately. They all picked safer topics.” I gave her a little push. “Be proud your daughter is going out of her way for her education.”
She sighed, still not finding my idea entertaining. “I’m more proud of the ones who picked safer topics.”
I laughed.
After a moment, she stood up and disappeared into the kitchen. I followed a beat later, leaning over the counter as she checked the pot on the stove.
“Need help?”
She raised an eyebrow. “To burn the food? No thanks.”
“Hey!”
With a quiet laugh, she handed me the chopping board, and we fell into an easy rhythm—cooking, chatting, and laughing.
Our flat was small; two bedrooms, all wood, walls thin enough to hear each other sneeze. The kitchen opened into the living room, and the whole place smelled of cinnamon candles and cumin. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t quiet. But it was home.
I didn’t have a dad. Not that I remembered, anyway. Twenty-three years, and not even a photo to pretend with. Mother never talked about him—like, ever. And honestly, I didn’t push. Some doors were better left closed.
Nimorran.
Nimorran.
The name echoed in my blood and bloomed inside my chest. Not only did it make my veins jittery, it made my bones feel wired. Like some part of me had been waiting my whole life to go back to a place I’d never been.
While everyone else picked safe final year research topics that could be gathered from the internet—even though the aim was to find new things or bring old, forgotten history to light—I chose the kind that made even my mother raise an eyebrow.
History wasn’t just facts and artefacts.
It was hunger.
A question that grew teeth when left unanswered.
And Nimorran?
It was the one place I wanted to bring to light for my thesis. A scar on the land with a story blurred by time, stitched shut by superstition. But I wanted to tear those stitches open. I wanted to dig my hands into the dirt of the past and feel what was buried.
That was why I was going to Nimorran. And the train to that town was leaving tonight. The only one until next month.
They said the moon’s wrath fell there fourteen hundred years ago—right into the ground, leaving behind a big Crater that no bird dared fly over. The Crater was roped off as a “historical site,” but no one really went there.
It was where I’d be spending the next twenty-eight days. Studying it and living in it.
It was like killing two birds with one stone. Getting truth, facts and answers to the questions I wanted, and completing my thesis:
Crater Sites and Celestial Myths: A Geological Re-examination of the Nimorran Cataclysm
I smiled. Yeah. Bit of a mouthful. But it was mine. And I would dig through it.
My smile dropped.
...I could also be digging my grave as well.