The forest was no longer a refuge; it was an extension of my will. Where once I had hidden in its shadows, now the shadows were mine to command. The ancient trees, their bark like the wrinkled skin of forgotten gods, stood as silent sentinels, their roots drawing strength from the same deep earth that now answered to me. The power I had reclaimed did not burn like a fever; it flowed like a cool, subterranean river, endless and absolute. This was not the borrowed, frantic vitality of the blood-drinkers. This was the patient, unyielding power of life itself.
I sat on a throne of woven roots and living moss, the moonlight filtering through the canopy to pool around me like liquid silver. I was listening. Not with my ears, but with the new senses that had awakened within me. I could feel the
