Sleep came in fragments.
Every time closed my eyes, the world dissolved into silver mist and whispers. Faces I didn’t know drifted through the haze-wolves with eyes like starlight, a woman standing beneath a blood-red moon. Her voice wasn’t sound but memory, old and endless.
When I woke, my mark was glowing again. Faint, steady, pulsing in time with my heart. The air felt difficult, too- heavier, as if the night itself was waiting for something.
I pushed open my window. Outside, the forest slept under a thin crescent of moon. The same one that had watched me since my first transformation. For a moment I thought I saw her again- the Goddess- but the figure that shimmered among the trees wasn’t her.
It was the woman from my dreams.
Her hair was white as frost, her gown woven from light
