The black sand of the Whispering Coast did not crunch beneath my feet; it yielded like silk, swallowing the sound of my movement as if the earth itself were afraid to disturb the transition. I stood at the edge of the churning sapphire abyss, the spray from the receding ghost-waves hitting my face. But I didn't feel the sting of the salt or the bite of the wind. My skin, now a matte, light-drinking black, felt like a pressurized hull. I was a vessel filled to the absolute brim with the grief of three centuries, the memories of the drowned, and the final, flickering warmth of my mother's soul.
I looked down at my hands. They were no longer the hands of the girl who had scrubbed the floors of the Blood-Crag Pack house. They were the talons of a Sovereign. The red-gold scales had been overwritten by a layer of obsidian plates that shimmered with a faint, oily iridescence—like a raven's wing in moonlight.
I turned away from the ocean and looked at the cliffs.
