Chapter One: Blood in the Lilies

She walked barefoot through the field of lilies—her favourite. The delicate white flowers shimmered like pearls in the morning sun, their scent light and sweet in the breeze. Her fingertips grazed their soft petals as she passed, and a smile bloomed on her lips.

Here, in this field, she was free. Whole. Happy.

Then, without warning a loud boom sounded above her – thunder. It was sudden. Hollow. It rolled across the sky like a great drumbeat

echoing from heaven’s vault. She stopped and turned her face to the clouds, the sun had vanished behind a bruised curtain of grey.

A drop fell. Then another. She tilted her face up. Rain, she thought. Rain was good. Rain was life. But when the drops landed on her skin, she froze. Something was wrong, the drops were red, thick, warm. It was blood.

She stared at her arms, now streaked in crimson. More drops fell— splattering against her white dress, staining the field. She gasped.

Stumbled back. All around her, the lilies were turning red. The soil ran dark. The rain fell in torrents now—hot, suffocating. A storm of blood.

She tried to run, to flee—but the ground beneath her turned slick. She slipped, cried out, and fell into a river she hadn’t seen before. It raged with red fury, pulling her under. She screamed as she drowned in it.

(Comment for chapter two)