Night settled over Winterborn land in quiet layers, soft and strange. It did not loom the way nights once had. It did not stalk the ridge with promises of ruin. It simply arrived, calm and heavy, like a blanket pulled over a restless world.
The wolves did not sleep.
Not because they feared attack, but because they did not yet know how to exist without something chasing them. Stillness felt unfamiliar. Safety felt suspicious. Freedom tasted like something too sweet to swallow without checking for poison.
I walked among them, listening without speaking. I heard whispered questions.
What now?
Who leads.
Where do we stand?
Wolves had always been creatures of instinct. Yet instinct had been tied to prophecy for longer than any of them remembered. Now instinct was untethered, and no one k
