**LENA'S PERSPECTIVE**

In the morning, the summit was restless.

I knew something had changed even before I opened my eyes.

The silence was wrong.

It wasn't quiet. It wasn't peaceful.

It was bad.

The guards had multiplied outside my door. The unsettling fear that hung over the summit rested on my shoulders.

My body still ached from the poison, from the change, from whatever it was that had awakened inside me the night before. And when I finally sat up, the silvery glint waiting in the mirror acro