The push came out of nowhere. One moment, Emily felt the warmth of sunlight glinting off the waves; the next, cold water wrapped around her like a thousand heavy hands, pulling her down. Panic surged through her chest as she flailed, trying to kick to the surface. But her legs wouldn't move. She looked down, seeing a jagged stone gripping her ankle like a vise beneath the shifting waters.
Every instinct screamed at her to break free, but the stone was unyielding. Her lungs burned, her vision blurred, and she could feel the darkness pressing in on the edges of her mind. Just as her last bubble of air escaped, something-a shape-began cutting through the water toward her. Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her upward.
Then everything went black.
A moment later, or maybe an eternity, Emily felt herself cradled on soft ground, a weightless sensation of warmth spreading over her as if the sun were drying her soaked body. Slowly, she opened her eyes, blinking away the haze. Above her was a face, one she knew as well as her own-Alex, her boyfriend. But... something was wrong.
"Alex..." she mumbled, her voice weak and shaky.
But Alex's face darkened, and his brows knitted into a stern expression she had never seen before. "I told you, don't call me that," he said, his voice oddly cold, yet somehow familiar. "My name is Alexander."
Emily's mind reeled. She tried to make sense of the world around her, and suddenly, she realized that the sky was not the vibrant blue she remembered, and the scent of the air was thicker, fragrant with spices and earth. She looked down at herself, feeling an unfamiliar fabric heavy on her skin-ornate, embroidered robes that seemed to shimmer in the light.
Her head spun. "What... what is going on?" she whispered, her voice sounding foreign even to her own ears. She looked at Alexander's face, searching for some sign of familiarity, some hint that would make sense of what was happening.
But all she found was a stranger's intensity in the eyes of the man she thought she knew. And as she tried to comprehend it all, the dizziness took over once more, and Emily felt herself falling back into darkness.