The silence of the cell was absolute, a heavy and suffocating weight that felt like it was pressing the very air out of my lungs. I lay on the cold, sterile floor, Silas’s parting words echoing in my mind like a rhythmic drumbeat. Stop my heart. It was a classic sovereign technique—the "Death-Sleep" used by the ancient queens of the North to survive the Great Frost or to hide their presence from trackers. But it required a level of internal control and mental stillness that I had never truly mastered. I had always been the fire, the storm, and the explosion. I didn't know how to be the still, frozen lake beneath the ice.
“Breath is a choice, Elara,” my mother’s voice whispered in my memory—a real memory this time, from the golden days before the ravine and the betrayal. “The wolf lives
