Night pressed heavy against the ruins where Rose and her mates slept. Moonlight spilled through the cracks of shattered walls, casting silver across her brow. Her breath was calm, her hand curled around the faintly glowing pendant that hung against her chest.
It pulsed once—twice.
And then she was no longer there.
Darkness surrounded her. Not cold. Not suffocating. Just vast. Still.
The weightlessness came first. Then the warmth. Not from fire—but memory.
The void peeled away, like curtains drawn back, and she stood barefoot in a silver desert. The sky overhead was shattered, stars bleeding their light across a canvas of black storms. On the horizon, a tree blazed—not burning, but alive—its branches gold, bearing leaves shaped like flickering moments in time.
Rose stepped forward.
A
