Vanessa P.O.V
Two days of training sharpened me like cold glass.
Each morning began with Sage Nolan's gravelly voice and Adrien's steady hand, the pair of them anchoring me between discipline and compassion. The breathwork that had once felt like suffocation now began to settle into rhythm. I inhaled through my nose, slow and deliberate, then exhaled through my mouth, releasing panic in a stream I could almost see. Nolan had been right-control wasn't a spell, it was a muscle. Muscles demanded repetition, and repetition slowly turned weakness into habit, habit into strength.
Still, it was humiliating at first. To be the supposed "vessel" of Selene, the cursed girl the pack whispered about, and yet sit cross-legged in the dirt like a novice learning to still my heartbeat. Children peeked
