The old woman who emerged from the parting crowd moved like gravity itself had bent to accommodate her passage. White hair cascaded down her back in waves that seemed to shift between solid and smoke, catching light that didn't exist. Her face bore lines that looked less like age and more like runes carved by powers that predated language. But her eyes—f**k, her eyes held depths that made Akira's twelve thousand winters feel like a single heartbeat in an immortal's chest.
Those eyes were windows into the space between stars, holding knowledge that could shatter minds, memories that stretched back to when the world's bones were still soft. When she looked at Akira, it wasn't seeing—it was knowing, down to the molecular level, reading her essence like an open wound.
"Grandmother," Landon s
