Prologue

West Texas, 1890

The land stretched wide and quiet beneath the summer sun—

dry earth, scattered mesquite trees, and long shadows that seemed to reach for something just beyond sight.

He had been told not to wander.

But the land called to him anyway.

It always did.

There was something about the silence… the way the wind moved without sound, the way the ground held its secrets just beneath the surface.

He rode slowly, guiding the old horse along a path that wasn’t really a path at all— just memory, instinct, and the soft pull of curiosity.

“Don’t go too far,” his grandfather had said.

But how far was too far… when the world felt endless?

He leaned forward slightly, scanning the land— cactus, stone, dry brush… and then— something moved.

Not across the sky. Not along the ground.

But up.

He froze.

The horse shifted beneath him, uneasy. From the earth itself—

a bird burst upward. Wings wide. Sudden. Silent. As if the ground had released it.

His breath caught in his throat.

That… wasn’t right. Birds didn’t come from the ground. They didn’t disappear back into it either.

But this one—circled once… and dropped.

Straight down.

Gone.

Into the earth.