The world doesn’t erupt in chaos all at once—not with spectacle, not with thunder. It fractures, slow and sly, its splinters running along the places no one thinks to watch. Change is seldom loud at first. It’s a whisper, a rumor, a hairline crack spidering its way through everything you thought was solid. By the time dawn stains the horizon, the truth has already been trampled underfoot, left behind in the rush of stories spun by those hungry for advantage.
The packs are already murmuring by sunrise, their words carrying farther than they know in the chill air. They say there’s something ancient pulling itself up from the dark valley, a thing that should have stayed buried. And, of course, it’s Alessia Valente’s fault. They say she opened a door nobody else dared touch—a door that cannot
