Eva Lovely was a goddess, and she was afraid. She had guarded her mortal for a lifetime, turning aside every unseen thing that reached for him. But death was coming to take him, and death was one thing she could not fight. So she had made a plan. She would pour her divine essence into his soul and bind the two together forever. To carry that essence between the mortal realm and her own, she needed a vessel strong enough to survive the crossing. She had found only one. A wolf cub. Inside her crystal temple, the cub waited on the cold floor. It was small and white, with folded wings and pale runes glowing under its fur. It looked up at her and wagged its tail. Eva knelt and pressed her palm to its chest. A thread of her light slid into the cub. The little body shook. Its legs buckled. It cried out and collapsed, panting on the stone. Eva pulled her hand back. The light drained away. The cub had failed to hold even a fraction of her essence. It was too young. Its body could not bear her weight, and she had no years to wait for it to grow. She stood and looked at the sacred tree that grew through the temple's heart. Its branches burned with symbols of fire, water, and life. Beneath the lowest boughs hung clusters of moonfruit, plump and glowing. She had studied the old lore. The fruit fed growth. It made weak things strong. Eva gathered a handful of the berries and returned to the cub. She crushed one against its mouth. The cub licked, then ate. She fed it a second, a third. Light spread beneath its fur. Its shaking eased. Its wings twitched and stretched wider than before. But fruit alone was too slow. She needed to shape the growth and hold it steady. From the tree's roots she took bark and blessed vine. She wove them with metal and stone into a harness marked with growth runes. She strapped it across the cub's chest. The runes flared to life. The cub yelped, then rose. It stood taller. Its shoulders thickened as she watched. Eva pressed her palm to its chest once more and sent her light in. This time the cub held. Its legs stayed firm. Its blue eyes met hers without pain. Her essence flowed into the vessel and settled, and the cub carried it without breaking. It had worked. The cub could bear her now. But when Eva lifted her hand, the runes on the harness kept burning. The cub's body kept growing. Its limbs stretched. Its snout began to change. She had forced the growth too far, and now she could not stop it. The vessel she needed was turning into something else, and her mortal had less time than ever.