Moonlight behaves wrong.
It does not shine. It does not glow. It rises.
Thin streams of silver light peel upward from the ground, drawn toward the massive fissure tearing across the sky. The beams stretch like liquid pulled by gravity that does not belong to this world. The trees around us bow, their trunks groaning as if forced to kneel before something ancient.
The wind turns violent and cold. Not winter cold. Not storm cold. A deeper cold that burns. A cold that carries the memory of a place that never had a sun.
My paws skid across the rock as I look up. The crack pulsates, widening, thrumming with a power that makes my vision blur. My wolf snarls helplessly, unable to understand but certain this is wrong. Very wrong.
Then I hear it.
Her voice.
At first it is almost lost in the
