Revised, bulkier chapter #1

Here is a more “lore dense” version of my upcoming novel. It will give you a better view at the scope of the story. Overall, the themes are the same—mystery, lore-dense, cozy, thriller, bit of romance and definitely lots of twists.

Enjoy & let me know what you think. You’re of a great help! (Also, don’t mind the underscores, it’s from the software i write in)

#1

_"Something terrible had happened. Something terrible will happen."_

A beeping sound, like a distant siren, woke Liam from his sleep with tears in his eyes. He couldn’t tell how long he’d slept, but it felt endless, as if every time he closed his eyes, days slipped by before he opened them again.

Wind howled in the dark room, its cold currents slapping his body from all sides. His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. The room was bare—nothing but the hard mattress, the miserable short blanket, and a narrow window that barely let in any light. He wasn’t home, because his room in Grenim—he hardly recalled it now—was nothing like this. His room in Grenim was full of all sorts of books, and an old writing machine, and empty cups of coffee, and folded papers. He wrote notes about everything, and sometimes just burned them.

It snowed outside. _This can’t be true._ It never snowed in Grenim. Not there. Not anywhere near it. Liam’s heart beat so fast. His hands trembled with fear. He must be too far from home—too far from Bernadette._Bernadette_. He remembered. The thought of his little sister made the world shrink and darken again.

His head hurt every time he tried to think hard of how he ended here. The cold wasn’t helping. He stretched his stiff arms and looked around. A long time had passed while he was in this place, he believed, but couldn’t confirm. His body resisted waking, every muscle ached as if it had forgotten how to move.

A purple book lay beside his pillow. Next to it sat a digital clock. Four in the morning. And three months after the last time he had been awake. _Three months. This can’t be true._ The clock must be wrong. Clocks failed all the time—dead batteries, cheap parts, someone tampering with them. But what if it wasn’t wrong? Three months was a very long time to leave Bernadette alone. If three months had _really_ passed, then who took care of her? And what happened to everyone during that time?

The purple book was titled Alethea. He opened the first page. One word. “Alethea.” He stared at it longer than he meant to. The word felt heavy, like it carried something he had forgotten. The second page showed him and Bernadette hugging in a hospital room. Another random page featured a girl he couldn’t recognize. It was a strange book—but not as strange as it should have been. The corners of its pages were burnt. Something was familiar about it. He flipped through the book and a page grabbed his attention, its title: Rain of the World; with a lot of text below the title. The first line sent shivers down Liam’s spine. 'From clay to flesh. From flesh to clay.'

He hesitated see more of this book, but he did. Air went dry in his windpipe. A full page of black glassy statues, glistening and dead, in a familiar place he couldn’t fully recognise.

Liam breathed deeply, and closed the book, determined to leave. He checked his pockets for his phone. _Nothing._ Strange. He had never stayed away from his phone, especially these past months—waiting for a call from the hospital. Rituals Coffee came back to him slowly. The last place he remembered being. What happened after that? He couldn’t tell. It felt like most of his memories were gone—but not _all _of them. He liked reading and writing and minding his own business, he remembered that too.

He stepped out of the room and into what looked like a cabin’s living area. Leather sofas sat around a table draped in beige shawls. Two rocking chairs faced a burning fire in the hearth. The crackle of wood filled the space, casting shifting light and fragile warmth. It was warmer than the room he’d woken in—but the cold still lingered.

_I must get back to her._He talked to himself, like he always did, as he walked towards the wooden door that likely lead outside. He placed his hand around the cold doorknob and opened the door. He was greeted with fields of snow and tall oak trees and mountain peaks. As far as he remembered—though he couldn’t rely much on memory now—he’d never been to a mountain in his life. How could he be here, possibly hundreds of miles away from Grenim?

"Boy," a big old man, whom Liam surprisingly just noticed—given his size—said, from the chair in the porch next to the door. "You’re up? You’re up! Does Tilly know that?"

"Who are you?" Liam had to ask. "Where am I?"

" _Seriously?_" He said, squeezing his red beard. The old man, who had long white hair pulled into ponytail, seemed surprised about Liam. What had surprised him, though—that Liam didn’t know where he was, or that he was awake?

"I need to go home,"

He inhaled the cigar deeply, cocked an eyebrow and grimaced in response to Liam’s request. "Home? You’re really something, aren’t ya’? Get back inside, lil’ scum, or I’ll tear your skull open."

He placed the cigar back into his mouth the moment he finished talking, as if his life depended on it. It wasn’t the response Liam thought he’d get. Even though he could consider this a kidnap, somehow it didn’t feel like it. He could be wrong. Regardless, he didn’t like the old man’s tone.

"Where are we? How did I end up here?"

"You’re in Mount Alethea. Lucky, eh?" The old man sounded more baffled, and amused by the conversation. A puff of smoke covered most of his face. "I told her not to bring you here. I would have left you to rot in the Lowlands."

"What are you talking about?" Liam asked, ignoring the insults. "I just…need to get back to Grenim. How far is it?"

"Grenim?" The old man wondered, more baffled, scratching his white hair. "That place does not exist, son. Stay inside."

"What do you mean it doesn’t exist?" Liam said, walking out of the cabin. The cold air electrified him. Or it was the man’s response. "I must go back to my hometown. My sister needs me!"

The old man stood up and blocked the way right off. He was bigger than he seemed. He placed his giant hands on Liam’s chest and said. "What are you talking about? There’s no hometown. And you’re not going anywhere. Get inside, boy. Let me smoke in peace…might be the last cigar for me in the wilderness."

_Nonsense. What does he mean it doesn’t exist? Is he from a foreign country, unaware of the cities around here? _

A girl’s voice behind Liam shouted. "Enough, Gerald!"

She was almost his age. She had an oval face, brown short hair, and eyes he had seen before. She was the girl from the purple book. His vision tunneled. He was shocked to see her, and not because he’d seen her in the purple book. It was something else, something he couldn’t quit put his fingers on yet.

“Who are you?” Liam asked.

She flinched. Was she _not_ expecting the question? Was he supposed to know her?

“Tilly,” she answered, watching him closely—waiting to see if the name meant anything to him. It didn’t.

“Do I know you?”

“Get inside. We can’t stay out for too long,” she said, lowering her gaze, likely hurt by his question, and that he couldn’t recognize her.

"Why?"

“Do you remember the last thing that happened to you?”

It felt like an interrogation. He didn’t have to answer because for all he knew, she was his captor. And even though this cabin seemed peaceful, something heavier hung in the air—something far worse than a simple kidnapping.

"I was in a coffee shop," Liam said. Maybe now she’ll explain more. He’d no idea what happened before he went to the coffeeshop, or what happened after that.

“Rituals Coffee,” she replied, hugging her elbow closer to her body, as if remembering the place hurt her.

“How do you know it?”

Rituals Coffee was _his_ place—where he read, wrote, and disappeared. Early mornings when the town slept. Midnight, when he returned from the hospital where Bernadette received her treatment.

"It doesn’t matter," Tilly said. "The past doesn’t matter anymore."

Gerald joined the conversation, moving slowly to his big chair. "Get inside. I can’t observe the light from here," He stretched his shoulders and said, as if blaming Tilly. "That’s my job after all, isn’t it, to keep my eyes on the damned light up there?"

Only now Liam noticed a flickering green light in the highest point of the mountain that synced well with the sound of the siren. The siren’s sound faded and came as the light turned on and off.

"It keeps us safe," Gerald say. "The High Observatory of Mount Alethea. Let’s hope the light never dies."

"Just…where are we?" Liam asked, more confused. "Who brought me here?"

"I did," Tilly said. "Let’s get inside. Gerald’s right—we can’t stay outside for too long. It might rain anytime. We should be careful."

Liam weighed his options. He could escape and run into the wilderness of the mountain, or he could get inside and learn more. The later seemed more logical, given that he didn’t know where to go in this vast land of white.

He and the girl got inside while the old man returned to the chair and smoked his cigar. The scent of melting snow and aged timber filled the air. Damp wood, raw and earthy. It stirred something deep—something quiet. This place felt untouched. Detached. Perhaps in a different time, he would have stayed here longer.

"Look, I understand you’re trying to keep me safe and all," Liam said, standing near the hearth. "But there’s something urgent that I have to take care of."

"Your sister?" Tilly asked.

"You know her?"

"What you’re asking is impossible," Tilly said. "Your town doesn’t exist. You can never leave Mount Alethea. There’s nothing you can go back to. The Lowland has nothing that you can go back to. Mount Alethea is dark. The world outside the Mountain is darker."

_What does she mean it doesn’t exist? How could that possibly happen? Also, if she remembered Rituals Coffee, then Grenim must exist!_

He didn’t understand Tilly’s words—but something in him did. As if this cabin was where he belonged. As if leaving would be wrong. As if he knew how the mountain was dark, and how the world outside was darker. But he had a sister who needed him.

"Is she safe?" Liam asked.

"No," Tilly said. "She’s not."

His heart raced again and his hands sweated, despite the cold.

"Where’s she?" Liam asked. He stepped closer to Tilly . She didn’t move away. Her shoulders softened. Her expressions eased. A memory surfaced, one of him and her in Rituals Coffee. How close were they?

“I know you,” Liam said.

A flicker of a smile crossed her face—gone in an instant, as if she both loved and feared that he remembered her. Fragments of older memories followed. Liam was with Tilly at Rituals Coffee, late at night. Rain hit hard against the glass. It rarely rained in Grenim, but it did that night. 'You could lose her’, she had told him, a threat more than a warning. The memory cut sharp.

"Where is she?" He asked again, a terrible sense of possible loss taking over him. "Can I reach her?"

"No," she said, pushing strands of her brown hair behind her ears. She avoided eye contact. Gerald entered, and he listened to her answer and sent her a strange look. Was she lying? She could be.

“It was terrible—what happened then,” Tilly said. "I still dream about it every day."

He wasn’t listening. Worry was transforming rapidly into anger.

“You’re hiding something” he said. “You must know where she is!”

“I do. But you can’t reach her. None of us can!”

The words shattered him. Anger surged, fast and blind. This was his weakness. He was calm and sweet, until he wasn’t—until rage took over him. His body moved without permission from his mind, and he hated it—he hated this version of himself.

His hands moved before he realized it. He slammed Tilly against the wall, fingers tightening around her throat. She gasped, her face flushing, then darkening.

“You promised her,” Tilly said—calm, strained. “Remember?"

“Stop it! It’s happening. The green light went off!” Gerald said. "Get in."

Through the window, the green light was gone. Rain began to fall. Gerald hurriedly walked in and closed the door and locked it. But Liam didn’t care because when he looked at his hand, it was glistening, like black glass. _What the hell is that?_