This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

In the mist-shrouded valleys of Carpathia, where ancient oaks stretched their gnarled fingers toward the heavens and silver streams sang forgotten songs, there lived a young woman named Seraphina. Her cottage sat nestled between two hills, surrounded by wildflowers that bloomed in defiance of the eternal twilight that had settled over the land three years prior.

The perpetual dusk was no natural phenomenon. It had begun the day the Oracle of Delphi fell silent, when the last of the old seers spoke her final prophecy before turning to stone. Since then, the sun had refused to rise fully, casting the world in an amber glow that spoke of endings and unfinished tales.

Seraphina possessed a gift that set her apart from the villagers in the valley below—she could hear the whispers of the trees. It was a talent passed down through her maternal line, one that her grandmother had warned her to keep secret. "The world grows darker," the old woman had said on her deathbed, pressing a silver pendant into Seraphina's palm. "And those who carry the old magic must be ever more careful."

The pendant bore the image of a tree whose roots and branches formed an endless spiral, and it grew warm against her skin whenever danger approached. Today, as she gathered herbs in the grove where her grandmother had taught her the old ways, the pendant burned like a small sun against her chest.