This is absolutely not where Chie expects to be when she wakes up today. She expects to wake up in her croft with the rising of the sun, with enough time to get in a morning jog before her Watch shift. She expects to hear the sounds of the forest and her fellow villagers, background noise she's become accustomed to over the past few months of captivity in Demeleier. No one's thought to make something as simple and pleasurable as wind chimes; they all have other priorities, like surviving until the next day.

She sits up on the ground with a violent start, one hand flying to her head to make sure her rowan crown is still there, breathing a quick sigh of relief when it is. That reprieve doesn't last long; she can tell immediately that this isn't Demeleier, and that raises a number of troubling questions: where is she; what brought her here; what happened to her friends; what does she do now?