The field of silver lilies didn’t just wither; they turned to ash in the breath of a wind that smelled of old graves and ozone. The Mother’s voice—the one that had just called me "daughter" with such warmth—was now a serrated edge against my mind.
I looked down at the shadow stretching from my feet. It was no longer a flat, dark silhouette on the grass. It was a cavernous opening in reality, and from it, the Master was emerging. He didn't claw his way out; he unfolded. Many-limbed, eyes like dying stars, his form was a horrifying tapestry of every nightmare the werewolf race had ever whispered.
“You looked for the enemy in the mountains, in the Council, and in the humans,” the Master hissed, his voice vibrating through the white fire that was still being siphoned from my chest into the o
