Ava's POV
The world beyond the veil was silent.
Not the peaceful kind of silence, but the unnerving stillness that made the hairs on your arms rise and your breath feel like a sin.
I stood in a vast expanse of colorless space—no stars, no ground, no horizon. Just a horizonless, endless gray mist swirling in every direction. It wasn’t cold, but I shivered anyway.
I wasn’t alone.
“Welcome home,” the voice said.
It wasn’t Damon’s. It wasn’t Rae’s. It wasn’t even the Wild’s usual guttural rasp.
It was mine.
A second version of me stepped forward from the mist.
She had my face, my eyes, my voice—but where I wore exhaustion and scars, she wore power like a cloak. Her eyes glowed with a violet fire, and her skin shimmered faintly with the same sigils I’d seen etched into the old tree, in
