Rowan apprehensively pressed down on the home icon with a light but firm touch. The primer said something about “listening to the song of your world.” She couldn’t be entirely certain what that meant and hoped that her erratic starseed would be able to sense its melody. A sharp inhale followed by a forcibly slowed exhale betrayed the terror she was desperately trying to hide from herself. She couldn’t help but feel ridiculous as she tried to focus her mind on the “hum” she was supposed to hear, little more than a child shouting a spell they read in a fairytale.

It was easy to dismiss the fluctuating murmurs that resonated within her as a psychosomatic effect of willing something to happen. Soft, barely perceptible vibrations roared into cacophonous thunder before descending once more into breezy whispers as a thrumming in her chest intensified.
Rowan didn’t realize she had been squeezing her eyes shut until she felt a light, cold spray of seawater against her eyelids. Opening them seemed like an impossible feat, as much an admission that she had in fact left the quiet safety of her apartment as it was confirmation that she was in fact in perhaps one of the most bizarrely alarming situations anyone could conjure for themselves. Scrunching up her face she forced her eyes open to the hushed vista.

Her feet sank softly into white sand, turned grey under the sky’s struggling light as she scrutinized her surroundings, body vibrating with nerves on the verge of snapping. It might have been beautiful here once, though the roiling darkness of the skies and relentless hiss and roar of the sea lent the scene a distinct eeriness. Still, she couldn't deny the strangely welcoming feeling locked in battle with her rising anxiety.

Fog blanketed the waves, allowing only the briefest, faintest glimpses of an island in the harbor. The heights of a lonely tower peered shyly through the mist, its critical gaze knew her and for a fleeting, crushing moment she felt an irredeemable shame for her distance from its shelter. With a shake of her head she forced herself to turn from the island, the tower’s gaze burning reproachfully into her back.

She was supposed to be able to recover…something here. It was impossible to know what memories had bled into the sand and stone of this place. Despite the strange sense that she was where she needed to be, an unnamable dread lingered over the beach, hanging in the air like a miasma as it infiltrated her lungs and set her body aquiver. Eager to leave the feeling behind her she strode purposefully toward the jagged spine of crumbling walls that beckoned her up the rise. As she ascended, the gentle impact of her shoe against something hard drew her eyes back to the ground. The long-tarnished shine of metal reflected dully from its place in the thinning sand as Rowan bent down to inspect it, brushing aside the granules to reveal the gilded but degraded handle of a sword. Grasping it gently, she lifted it from the comfort of its home in the quiet of forgotten grief. The salt and sand had all but disintegrated the weapon’s blade, which remained in the grip of its handle by sheer luck.

She tried to focus on the remains of the sword, maybe with something concrete she could draw out whatever that something was. She inhaled as deeply as she could manage with the tightness in her chest and fixed her gaze upon it, trying to pull at the strings of its nebulous familiarity.

For the razor’s edge of a second she was elsewhere, some sharp heartbroken somewhere that both was and wasn’t this beach. An eruption of light as the unmistakably pungent scent of ozone filled the air, the faintest trace of smoke joined it before her mind went black.
“Sotiria,”

From her back Rowan stared up at the glowering sky, she didn’t remember collapsing into the sand.

Sotiria. A name that was hers and not hers. A name far older and crueler than even the memories that left her sprawled in the sand, a name more accusation than appellation.

Her hands trembled violently, struggling to retrieve her phone from her bag. She had intended to stay longer, explore more thoroughly, but her body obeyed no will outside of its own as it desperately opened the enigmatic passage home.