Nova's Pilgrimage

Nova Ishikawa was pushed.

One second she was at school, cornered near the edge of a river by another student—someone who never liked how quiet she was, how weird she seemed. The next, she was underwater, lungs burning, world spinning… and then—

She wakes on the shore of a different place entirely.

The sky is wrong. The air hums. Fog clings to her skin like a second layer. Whatever this place is, it isn't home—and there’s no sign that anyone’s coming to find her.

Thirteen, alone, and still trembling from the water in her lungs, Nova is thrown into a world that shifts like a dream and stings like a memory. Strange people. Unfamiliar monsters. Rules she doesn’t understand. She’s not a fighter. She’s not brave. She just wants to go home.

But if she’s going to survive this place, she’ll have to become something more than the girl who was pushed.She’ll have to stand.

Even if it means crawling.