The cold hit him before his eyes adjusted.
Arthur opened them.
Dark grass beneath his feet. Not the dark of something dying. The dark of something that had never been anything else, the color of it sitting somewhere between green and black, like the island had decided light wasn't worth the effort.
The trees were wrong too. Too thick at the base. Too tall. Their canopies met overhead and blocked out most of the sky, leaving the forest floor in a permanent shade that had nothing to do with the time of day.
And the water.
Around the island's edges the tide came in slow and heavy. Rust colored. Dark red where it caught what little light reached it, crashing against the stone shore with the sound of something that had been doing this for a very long time and didn't care who was listening.
Arthur stood in it for a second.
This place is wrong. This whole island is wrong.
