POV: Martha (the old elder lady)
The bones always know before the mind does. My joints had been aching with a specific, rhythmic throb for three days—the kind of pain that doesn't come from age, but from the earth itself reacting to a coming shift.
I sat in the corner of the garden, my gnarled hands buried in the cool, damp soil of the herb patch. People think I’m gardening, but I’m listening. The roots of the Diamond Moon trees go deep, and they are whispering of a cold wind blowing from the north. The "Ghost Phase," Jackson calls it. He thinks he can train the soul out of a wolf and turn it into a tool. He is a boy playing with matches in a room full of gunpowder.
I heard her footsteps before I saw her. Amethyst. She walked with a heaviness that shouldn’t belong to a girl of her years
