The Guardian returns the way storms do.
Not all at once. Not whole.
I feel it before I see it. A pressure shift in the wards, subtle but unmistakable, like the world briefly forgetting how to hold itself together. The air thickens, tasting of old light and colder things beneath it. My wolf rises without fear and without curiosity. Recognition comes first. Then grief, sharp and unexpected, cutting deeper because I did not know it was waiting.
The Guardian does not emerge from light this time.
It bleeds through the space between moments, seeping into existence like something dragged back against its will. Fractured and incomplete, its form breaks into overlapping echoes of what it once was. Where it had been vast and singular before, it is now segmented, edges blurred, pieces misaligned
