By Emily Carter • February 25, 2026 • Share
The first thing Jake Hollister saw was something dark lying in the middle of the grass.
From a distance it looked like a dead deer—just a lump against the sun-bleached prairie, too still, too wrong to be anything living. Jake had been riding the line fence on the east side of his land, the kind of morning work he’d done a thousand times without thinking, when that shape caught his eye and snagged it.
His horse slowed on its own, ears flicking forward.
Jake squinted into the glare.
Kansas in summer didn’t just get hot. It got mean. The sky turned white at the edges. Heat shimmered off the earth like the whole world was trying to burn clean. And the grass—what grass was left—lay flat and brittle, as if it had given up weeks ago.
Jake nudged his horse closer.
Then he froze right there in the saddle.
It wasn’t a deer.
It was a woman.
A young nun, dressed in a black habit, stretched out in the open like the prairie had spit her out and left her there. No shade. No wagon. No horse. No footprints except the faint scuffing trails in the grass that told Jake she hadn’t fallen so much as given out.
Jake swung off his horse so fast the dust rose up around his boots like smoke. His knees hit the ground beside her, and the heat rolled off her like a stove door opening.
Her feet were bare.
That hit him first, sharper than anything else.
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