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Episode 1 · Teen · 18+ private alpha
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About this story
✨ HOPE RISING ✨
A Cozy Fantasy Novel by Kim Brown
Tammy goes to sleep expecting another ordinary day.
Instead, she wakes in a silent forest with no idea where she is—or how to get home.
Beyond the trees lies Hope Rising, a seemingly perfect community built on peace, equality, and order. Tammy is given a new name—Celeste —a new home, a new purpose…and a long list of rules she is expected to obey.
But Hope Rising has secrets.
Every resident is secretly ranked. No one knows their own level. No one knows exactly what makes them rise or fall.
And nobody wants to talk about Level Zero.
Determined to get back to her family, Celeste begins searching for answers. But between forbidden paths, missing residents, hidden friendships, and an infuriating rule-follower named Andre, she starts wondering if she was really brought to Hope Rising to escape it…
Or to change it.
🌿 Found family
✨ Mysterious magic
💜 Slow-burn romance
🔐 Dangerous secrets
📜 Rules that might just need breaking
Not all rules are meant to be followed.
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These warnings apply to the story as a whole.
“What is this place?”
My own voice sounds strange in the silence. I stand perfectly still, waiting for something to answer—not a person, necessarily. A bird. An insect. The rustle of something small moving through the underbrush.
Anything.
Nothing does.
I feel as though I’ve just woken from a sleep that lasted a year. My thoughts are slow and tangled, my body heavy, and I have no idea how I got here.
Wherever here is.
Trees surround me in every direction, tall and dense enough that their branches weave together overhead. A breeze moves through them, stirring leaves and bending the grass near my boots. In the distance, the surface of what looks like a pond ripples gently.
I can see all of it, but I can’t hear any of it. No wind through the leaves. No water lapping against the shore. No animals skittering through the brush.
Nothing.
I’ve lived in the city my entire life. I know noise—cars passing outside, doors closing, people talking, televisions through walls, someone always moving somewhere. Even in the middle of the night, there is sound.
Here, the world seems to have forgotten how to make any.
I turn slowly, trying to get my bearings, but nothing is familiar. Every direction offers the same trees, the same grass, the same impossible quiet. My uneasiness begins to sharpen into fear.
I look down at myself. A dingy gray shirt hangs loosely over a pair of jeans. Black work boots cover my feet. My waist-long blonde hair has been pulled partially away from my face, though loose strands have already escaped.
None of it makes sense.
These aren’t the clothes I went to sleep in.
The thought stops me cold. I remember going to bed. I remember my home. I remember saying goodnight to my family. The memories are clear enough to make my chest ache.
And then—nothing.
No journey. No car ride. No reason I should have left home at all. Just my bed.
Then this.
“What is going on?”
My voice disappears into the trees without so much as an echo.
I force myself to breathe slowly. Panic won’t help. I need to think. The sun is already lowering, though I have no idea how long I’ve been awake—or unconscious—or whatever happened before I opened my eyes here.
I turn toward the brightest section of sky visible through the trees. If I can find a road, a house, another person—anything—I can start figuring this out.
So I walk.
The forest floor is uneven beneath my boots, scattered with roots and patches of thick grass. I move carefully at first, testing each step. My body feels strange—not injured exactly, but heavy and stiff, as though I’ve been lying still for far too long.
I keep looking over my shoulder.
The silence makes it worse. If something were following me, would I even hear it? I can’t hear an animal moving through the brush or a branch snapping behind me. Every few steps, I turn to check.
Nothing.
Keep moving. Find somewhere safe. Figure everything else out tomorrow.
I repeat the instructions until they almost become a rhythm.
Eventually, the trees thin enough for me to see the pond more clearly, and thankfully, it lies in the same direction I’m already heading. The moment I see the water, thirst hits me so hard that I stop.
My mouth is painfully dry. How did I not notice before? It feels as though I haven’t had anything to drink in days.
I hurry toward the pond, caution briefly losing its battle with need.
When I reach the edge, I kneel. The water is so clear that for a moment I simply stare at it. I can see stones beneath the surface as though there’s nothing between them and the air. Not a trace of mud clouds the shallows. No leaves float across the top. No insects disturb the surface.
It’s the cleanest natural water I’ve ever seen.
Almost unnaturally clean.
I lean closer, and my reflection stares back at me. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. The same small, slightly crooked nose I’ve always had.
Me.
Relief comes first. Then uncertainty.
Something is different.
I move closer to the water. My eyes seem bluer than I remember, brighter somehow. My hair catches the fading light in shades of gold and yellow that look more vivid than they should.
The changes are subtle enough that I wonder whether I’m imagining them. Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe waking up in a silent forest has finally pushed my brain past its limit.
“Still me,” I murmur.
For now, that will have to be enough.
The pond shimmers faintly, almost crystalline, and I remember why I came over here in the first place.
Water.
I hesitate. Drinking from a random pond in the middle of an unfamiliar forest is a terrible idea. Unfortunately, my body doesn’t seem interested in debating the issue.
I cup my hands and scoop up a little. The water looks perfectly clear. I smell it.
Nothing unusual.
I take the smallest sip I can manage. Coolness touches my tongue and slides down my throat, and I close my eyes.
It may be the best water I’ve ever tasted.
I drink again. And again.
Soon I abandon any attempt at restraint, scooping handful after handful until that isn’t enough either. I lean forward and lower my face to the surface, drinking until the terrible thirst finally begins to ease.
When I sit back, I’m breathing hard.
“That was dignified.”
At least I can still make myself laugh. Barely.
I stand and wipe my wet hands against my jeans. When I swipe a hand across my face, dirt smears across my palm.
I stare at it.
Another reminder that something happened to me. Something happened between crawling into my own bed and waking up here.
I just don’t know what.
I kneel again and use the pond water to wash the dirt from my face. The cold water helps clear some of the fog from my thoughts, even if it does nothing to answer the questions crowding them.
Where am I? How did I get here? Who brought me?
And does my family know I’m gone?
That last question hurts too much.
I push myself to my feet.
I’m going home. I don’t know how yet, but I am. Standing beside a pond asking questions no one can answer won’t get me there.
I continue toward the brighter section of sky. The light has changed while I was at the water, sinking lower and turning softer between the trees, so I pick up my pace.
Then something ahead catches my attention.
At first, I think my eyes are playing tricks on me. A haze hangs between the trees in the distance.
I stop and blink.
It’s still there.
“What now?”
I stare at it, trying to decide whether it’s mist or some strange effect of the fading sunlight. It doesn’t look like either. For one ridiculous second, I wonder whether the water did something to me.
But the haze remains.
Blue.
No—gray.
Green?
I can’t settle on a color because it seems to be all three at once. The shades move through one another slowly, almost like something alive beneath the surface.
Curiosity pulls me forward despite every sensible part of me suggesting the opposite. With each step, the haze becomes more distinct.
It isn’t floating randomly among the trees.
It has shape. Structure.
A boundary.
A barrier.
My heart beats faster.
Something is behind it.
I can’t see what. From this distance, the shifting colors are too thick to make out anything on the other side. But for the first time since waking, I’ve found something that doesn’t belong to the forest.
Something that might have been made.
And if someone made it, then there might be people nearby.
People mean answers. People mean shelter.
Maybe they even mean a way home.
The last of the daylight is slipping away, and I have no better choice. So I keep walking—toward the light, toward the shifting blue-gray-green wall, toward the unknown.
I move as quickly as the uneven ground allows, watching the strange colors twist and flow ahead of me.
I don’t know what waits beyond that barrier. I don’t know whether it’s safe. I don’t even know if reaching it will help me.
But right now, it is the only thing in this silent world that looks like an answer.
And something deep inside me says I need to reach it before darkness falls.
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If you woke up somewhere completely unfamiliar like Celeste, would you head toward the mysterious barrier hoping to find answers—or stay away until you knew it was safe? 🌅🏮
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