" Are you angry with me, Vasilisa Petrovna?” His voice held only mild surprise, quiet and inevitable: snow falling in a country without spring. “Do you think that there would be no death if I weren’t there to lead people into the dark? I am old, but old as I am, the world was far older before I ever saw my first moonrise. "

― Katherine Arden , The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy, #2)