Ancient Magic, The

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. In the heart of the Carpathian Mountains, where ancient pines touched the very heavens and mist danced between their emerald boughs, stood the village of Lumine?ti. It was a place forgotten by time, where the old ways still held sway and the boundary between the mortal realm and the world of spirits grew thin as gossamer threads. The villagers spoke in hushed tones of the magic that slumbered in the depths of the surrounding forest, magic as old as the stones themselves. Ileana Vasilescu had always felt the pull of the woodland paths that wound like silver ribbons through the darkness beyond her village. At seventeen, she possessed the keen eyes of her grandmother, eyes that could see what others missed—the shimmer of otherworldly light dancing between the leaves, the shadows that moved against the wind's direction, the flowers that bloomed out of season as if touched by unseen hands. Her grandmother, Viorica, had been the village's cunning woman, keeper of herbal lore and guardian of ancient secrets, until the fever took her three winters past. Now Ileana lived alone in the cottage at the village's edge, tending to her grandmother's garden of healing herbs and brewing the remedies that kept the villagers healthy through the harsh mountain winters. But tonight, as autumn's first frost painted silver patterns on her windowpanes, something called to her from the depths of the Whispering Woods—a sound like distant singing, like water flowing over ancient stones, like the very earth itself drawing breath. She wrapped her woolen cloak around her shoulders and stepped into the moonlit night. The air was crisp and clean, scented with pine and the promise of winter. Above, the stars wheeled in their eternal dance, and the moon hung full and bright, casting everything in silver relief. The singing grew stronger as she approached the forest's edge, and she could see tiny lights flickering between the trees like fallen stars.