This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The morning mist clung to the marble steps of the Temple of Apollo like whispered secrets refusing to be forgotten. Lysandra pulled her ivory chiton closer against the dawn chill as she descended toward the sacred spring, her bare feet silent on the ancient stone. Twenty-three years she had lived within these hallowed walls, twenty-three years of interpreting the god's cryptic messages, yet today felt different. The very air hummed with an energy that made her skin tingle and her heart race with inexplicable anticipation.

As the Oracle's daughter, Lysandra had inherited more than just her mother's position—she possessed the gift of foresight, though hers manifested differently. Where her mother spoke Apollo's prophecies in riddled verse, Lysandra experienced visions as vivid as waking dreams. This morning, those visions had been particularly troubling, filled with images of a dark-haired stranger whose amber eyes seemed to burn through the fabric of time itself.

She knelt beside the sacred pool, its surface reflecting the slowly lightening sky like polished bronze. The ritual of morning purification usually brought her peace, but today the water seemed to shimmer with an otherworldly light. As she cupped the cool liquid in her palms, a vision struck her with such intensity that she nearly tumbled forward into the spring.

A ship with black sails cutting through wine-dark waters. A man standing at its prow, his face weathered by salt and sorrow, his eyes scanning the horizon with desperate hope. The scent of myrrh and distant shores. And beneath it all, a pull so strong it felt as though invisible threads were drawing her very soul toward an unknown destiny.