This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The morning mist clung to the edges of Thornwood like a reluctant lover, unwilling to release its hold on the ancient forest that bordered the village of Millbrook. Elara Whitmore pressed her palm against the cool glass of her cottage window, watching the silvery tendrils dance between the towering oaks and twisted hawthorns that had stood sentinel for countless generations. At twenty-three, she had spent her entire life in the shadow of those woods, yet they remained as mysterious to her as the stars that wheeled overhead each night.

"Another restless morning, my dear?" Her grandmother's voice, warm as honey and twice as sweet, drifted from the kitchen where the scent of fresh bread and lavender tea created a cocoon of comfort.

Elara turned from the window, her long auburn hair catching the early light like captured flame. "The forest feels different today, Grandmother. More... alive somehow."

Grandmother Sage emerged from the kitchen, her silver hair braided with herbs and small flowers in the old way, her knowing eyes the color of deep forest pools. She had raised Elara since childhood, after a fever claimed both her parents when she was barely old enough to remember their faces. The older woman's hands, weathered from years of tending both garden and healing arts, carried two steaming cups.

"Perhaps it is not the forest that has changed, child, but you." Sage settled into her favorite chair, the one carved with protective runes that Elara had always assumed were merely decorative. "Today marks your twenty-third year upon this earth. In the old ways, that is considered a year of awakening."