The roads still ran through the Silverwood, old hunting lanes, merchant trails, and paths carved by centuries of passing hooves and boots. But the group stayed off them. Not because they were guarded. But because they could be. And that was reason enough.

  Lianna led, her Iskari features sharp in the dappled light. She wore the Warden armor of Verdantspire, muted greens and slate leathers fitted for silent movement. Frostclaw padded beside her, silent and alert. They didn’t make any unnecessary noise, they knew each other too well to need to. Their bonded nature made them more extensions of each other than true individuals. They had walked these lands together too many times. Her eyes scanned high branches and low ferns, and when she paused, it wasn’t hesitation. It was respectful, as with most wardens she knew the forest did not belong to them. It permitted their passage.

  Liosan scouted ahead, childlike in motion but never careless. He spun off branches, slid across fallen logs, and vanished behind thick trunks. His body moved with fluid grace, an effortless dance honed through instinct and repetition. Every few turns, he left quiet signs for Lianna to read, a twist of moss, a snapped twig, a specific pebble turned the wrong way.

  Though mute, he was a language of movement unto himself. His silence was not absence but presence, deep and deliberate. The forest accepted him, and he in turn read it like scripture, the twitch of a bird's wing, the distant rustle of disturbed leaves, the soft hush of a predator too slow to matter. In Liosan, the wilds saw no threat, only one of their own.

  The canopy above thickened as they advanced, light breaking only in narrow shafts. The smells of loam, damp bark, and crushed fern rose with each step. Ferns brushed Xavier’s knees as he moved near the middle of the formation, his pace measured and steady. Vaeltheris, in short sword form, rested on his left hip. At his right, the Emberstone short sword shimmered faintly with buried heat. He moved without hurry, one hand often grazing the hilt of either blade. Valkra moved beside him in wide arcs, sweeping through brush and returning often, her coat like a flowing shadow in the sun-dappled green. Where Frostclaw walked like a ghost, Valkra prowled like consequence.

  Ella walked to Xavier’s left. Her armor matched his style, light leather reinforced for agility, practical and silent. A matched pair of short swords hung mirrored at her hips; their hilts worn but well maintained. A compact bow sat across her back, its string waxed, and a quiver bound tight to the small of her back, its ingenious design allowing her to reach for and pull arrows free without them falling out of its hold. The collar at her neck bore the etched runes of an Arathian slave binding, but it was inert, the power held within it could not reach her through it due to her unique nature. She had donned it for Lianna’s sake during Ironhaven’s infiltration. She wore it still, a quiet testament of solidarity.

  She hummed now and then, a quiet, wordless note that drifted between breaths. It was not song, not truly. It was memory and wonder, wrapped in stillness. The tune was never the same, yet always familiar. The notes carried weight, and though no language shaped them, they resonated with something older than speech.

  Sihri grumbled from her usual place near the rear. "Too many trees. Too many eyes. Not enough sky."

  Her own collar still active, though free of commands, twitched faintly against her neck as she ducked under a crooked branch. She thumped the side of her shoulder against a trunk and growled, more irritated than injured. "One good tunnel would fix half this nonsense."

  She adjusted the wrappings around her fists as she walked, glancing now and then at low dips in the trail, instinctively checking for signs of burrows, cave mouths, any opening into the deeper places she still trusted. Her homeland was sand, not leaf. A child of the desert, not the forest. Though she knew tunnels. She had bled and fought in them beneath the scorched southern plateaus, she did not trust the forest. Its silence was different. Its roots were too alive.

  Ahead of her, Lythara stepped over a tangle of roots and turned her head slightly. "A tunnel would get you buried before you saw daylight again. These woods might be watching, but they don’t collapse when the wind changes."

  She moved with calm confidence, her booted steps light and deliberate. Her crimson eyes scanned the tree line with military precision. She wore no slave collar, she never had. Her chains had been infernal, carved into her flesh and soul through a pact with Ivarik Tharn long before the Edict. Under him she had led the Redmaw Reavers on raids across the Wildlands and into Animari territory. Verdantspire had, in fact, known her name in fire and blood.

  She had walked through blood and flame under Ivarik Tharn's contract, her will bound, her actions shaped. But now she chose. And it was that freedom offered by Xavier, not demanded that held her attention more than any order or leash ever could. He hadn't forced her to follow. He had given her the option, and to someone born of chaos, that mattered more than any oath.

  Lianna hadn’t forgotten the succubus’ past, and she remained vigilant for possible betrayal. However, Lythara for her part, had not stopped earning the Iskari woman’s trust since Ironhaven. She didn’t linger in command, didn’t push forward. She followed when needed and spoke only when her insight was necessary. She hadn’t changed her nature, but she had changed her direction.

  Liosan accepted her presence without question. He trusted who Lianna trusted, and now, who Xavier did too.

  The small party traveled like this for days. The forest thickened in spring bloom, green and golden in the late season. Moss ran rampant across every stone. Vines hung like skeletal curtains. Somewhere above, a hawk called and was answered. Once, they passed an old hunting stand abandoned long ago, its wood silvered with age and the scent of rain. The further they went, the fewer signs of civilization remained. They crossed dry streambeds and bypassed an old Animari trail marker carved into stone, a warning glyph half-covered by ivy. None touched it.

  On the fifth day, the ground sloped down into a shadowed grove. The earth there was soft, too soft. Xavier crouched beside a leaning pine and pressed his palm into the dirt. His eyes closed for a breath.

  "The ley’s still here," he said quietly. "Subtle like breath beneath the soil. Not gone. Just distant. I can feel the Syr’Vailen nexus still, faint and steady, but we’ve passed beyond its reach. The ley lines are still alive, they always are but they’ve grown faint here. Dim. Like a river running beneath layers of stone, still flowing but harder to feel."

  Ella knelt beside him, fingers trailing a thin root. "Not broken. Just holding its breath. Like it remembers something heavy standing on it."

  Lythara joined them, crouching low. Her fingers moved with the precision of someone used to tracing magical seams, brushing aside pine needles until she revealed a stone, flat, worn, shaped like a hinge or the base of something older.

  Her crimson eyes narrowed as she extended her awareness, attuned not to the raw pull of mana but to its resonance, the way it layered through the world. She was an enchanter by training, her skills forged in layered bindings and subtle weaves, not the wild breath of ley lines. Yet even she could sense the sluggishness in the flow here. More than magic, though, it was instinct that drew her close, the same intuition that guided her through shadows, that made her a deadly shadowdancer.

  "This isn't dead ground," Lythara murmured. "It’s not empty either. Mana like this... it’s resting. Like something coiled under the surface. Not like the deep power near Verdantspire where it hums with life. Rynthavael as well, there’s something there too. Old, awake in its bones. But this? This feels more like the Shattered Expanse. Like those ruined reaches near the borders there, scarred and wary, as if something once shattered still echoes through the ley. Not wild, but hesitant. Tethered to memory instead of flow. It’s not gone. It’s remembering. Holding to something old and heavy, like it’s waiting to be unburied. Not broken. Just bound in memory. Held still, until something changes."

  The silence that followed was not awkward. It was acknowledgment.

  Lianna raised her hand from a small rise ahead. "Left bend. Streambed cut. No recent tracks. Safer."

  Sihri exhaled through her nose. "You all act like the dirt is whispering secrets."

  Lianna didn't turn. "It does. You just do not listen."

  Liosan flicked a quick hand signal from a branch above and vanished again, not even rustling the leaves.

  That night, they camped beneath a ridge where the trees bent low and the air clung damp against the skin. No fire. Just cold rations, hard-packed ground, and long silences. The air smelled of leaf mold and slow decay, but it was clean, and for the moment safe.

  Frostclaw curled against Lianna without a sound. Valkra lay close to Xavier, twin tails twitching gently.

  Ella sat a few feet from him, cleaning her bow. The hum returned, softer now, as if it wasn’t meant to be heard at all. It came and went in waves, like wind shifting through hollow stone.

  Xavier listened, not to the melody, but to the meaning beneath it. It wasn’t a song. It was memory made breath.

  It was on the sixth day they noticed that the trees had thinned. Not all at once, but gradually, like the breath of the forest was being held a little longer with each step. The thick, whispering green of the Silverwood receded into sparser undergrowth, the canopy thinning enough that the pale sun filtered clearly through. Beyond a ridge of moss-crowned stone, the shape of a wall appeared: cracked timber, long-untended.

  Bramblegate.

  Lianna slowed as they came into view of it, ears flicking, tail lowering in stillness. The scent of ash had long since faded, but memory lingered in the soil. Frostclaw walked beside her in silence, pressing close without needing command.

  What had once been a modest border town now lay in ruin. The wooden wall was mostly collapsed, but enough remained to hint at its former perimeter. Gateposts leaned at crooked angles. Vines had overtaken the beams, and thorns crept across the outer fence like nature trying to stitch the wound closed. On one beam, dark streaks marred the grain, blood, soaked deep into the wood and never scrubbed away. Dirt near the broken gate had turned dark and brittle, where blood had pooled long ago and baked into the soil. Where the path split into the town, a splash of deep rust stained the stone, as though something once bled out beneath the open sky and the earth refused to forget.

  "They didn’t even take the time to strip fully it," Sihri murmured behind them. Her voice had lost its usual sharpness. "Just hit it and moved on."

  Ella said nothing. Her eyes traced the line of rooftops that were no longer whole, the burned shapes conjuring a memory etched into her bones. This had been one of the first trips she had taken with Xavier in Arath, just days after his arriving. The fire had still smoldered. The screams had still echoed enough to help them find those still being tormented and used. Chains had hung from overturned wagons and posts, the scent of blood still strong enough to sting the eyes. She remembered stepping into one of those buildings and finding a child curled beneath a table, barely breathing, her voice gone from screaming. They had saved her, but not all. Not nearly enough.

  Xavier passed through the broken gateway, one hand brushing the wood as he stepped beneath the remnants of the arch. His jaw tightened, but his eyes swept the space like someone stepping back into a grave they’d once helped dig. "It hasn’t changed," he murmured. "The bones are still here. Just... older."

  There had been no effort to rebuild. No one had come back. Ferns pushed up through what remained of the street. The cobbles were split and shifting, many pulled aside by time or weather. Crates and carts once used for trade were now cracked husks, their metal fittings rusted or looted. A few still had faded paint on the sides, symbols of merchants that no longer passed this way.

  Lianna moved slowly toward the town square. She stepped lightly, not from fear but reverence. Here, where stone met scorched wood, had been the center of Bramblegate. Now it was a shallow depression in the earth, with only the dry outline of the well and the warped base of the old noticeboard left behind.

  Liosan crouched beside it, tilting his head at the foundation. He touched a stone that had clearly been cracked by heat, then turned it over to find an old glyph carved into the underside. Not a spell, just a sign of welcome. He set it gently back.

  "Some of these made it to Rynthavael," Lianna said softly, as if to no one. "About fifty of the town's people made it out after the raid. Xavier and Ella brought them back. They were the first to settle the valley. The rest..." She didn’t finish.

  Frostclaw nosed at the broken doorway of a house, then backed away with a low growl. Just beyond the threshold, a long stain stretched across warped floorboards, soaked so deeply into the grain it had turned the wood black. Scattered bones lay against the far wall, half buried beneath collapsed roofing. This had been one of the worst houses. Xavier had found three people here. He hadn’t said much after dragging the bodies out for burial. Bones still lay inside now, gnawed and scattered. Not all of the raiders had been human, and not all of the victims had died cleanly.

  "We passed through just after it happened," Xavier said. "The smoke hadn’t even cleared. Chains were still warm from use. Some of the bodies hadn’t been buried. We didn’t have time for all of them. We buried the villagers where we could, marked the graves in what ground wasn’t burned or scattered. The raiders, we left to the animals. No one mourned them."

  Ella crouched beside him, brushing dust from a piece of broken blade. Her fingers lingered on it longer than they should have. "This was hers," she said quietly. "The little girl. She had this in her hand when I found her in the corner. Too small to fight. Too smart to scream. We found her before the raiders came back."

  Valkra paced slowly at the edge of the square. She was silent, but the fur along her spine was bristling. She stopped near an overturned bench, sniffed once, and let out a soft exhale. Not a growl, not a warning, just a recognition. She too had been here with Xavier and Ella, though had remained outside the fighting. She had matured and leveled quickly in her time with the group.

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  Lythara stood apart from the others, near the breached edge of the outer wall. Her arms were crossed, eyes scanning the ridgeline beyond. Her posture was not tense, but alert. "No patrols," she said. "They don’t bother with ruins."

  Xavier rose. "They don’t need to. They think no one would come back."

  "They’re not entirely wrong," Ella said, glancing at the others. "Most wouldn’t."

  Sihri kicked at a half-buried crate, her ears twitching in discomfort. "We shouldn’t stay long. Feels like the place is holding its breath." Her voice was quieter now, the weight of it unfamiliar. She had seen death before, fought in blood-soaked pits where the air stank of iron and despair. But this was different. This was not a place where death had a crowd or rules. It was not a contest. This was a graveyard, and the ground remembered.

  Lianna turned, her expression unreadable. "We camp outside the walls."

  They moved with care back toward the forest’s edge, settling beneath a thicket of dense-branched fir. The trees here were close-knit, the undergrowth sparse enough for clear vision but tangled enough to conceal them from casual view. There was no fire Even Valkra curled close to Xavier without needing to be called. Frostclaw lay near Lianna, unmoving. Sihri rested against a low log, tightening the bindings of her steel-studded leather wraps with idle focus. She adjusted their fit around her knuckles, checking for loosened studs or frayed edges. There was nothing to sharpen, not really, but checking them gave her hands something to do and her thoughts something to anchor to. Liosan vanished partway up a tree, unseen but watching. Lythara sat with her back to a stone, not quite in the group’s center, but not apart either. Her blade was unsheathed but idle in her hands. Ella rested with her bow laid across her lap, eyes closed but not asleep. The hum returned, almost imperceptible. Like a memory whispered through bark.

  Eventually, it was Lianna who broke the silence. Her voice was low, the weight of command stripped away by remembrance of the devastation. "They’ll expect us to follow the river east."

  "We won’t," Xavier replied. "We cut north. The ravine trail."

  Ella opened her eyes. "No patrols there. Too unstable. No reason to watch it."

  "No reason except someone with purpose might take it," Lythara said. Her tone was even, but something flickered behind her eyes.

  Sihri grunted. "Perfect. Let’s twist our ankles to stay one step ahead of fate."

  "Better a twisted ankle than a blade in the ribs," Lianna muttered.

  No one argued that point. Death hung like an unwelcome cloak on their thoughts.

  The air was colder that night. Not from wind, but from memory. Bramblegate didn’t cry out. It didn’t accuse. It only lingered. Like smoke clinging to cloth long after the fire had gone out.

  As the moon rose over the treetops, Xavier found himself awake, staring at the stars he couldn’t name. He hadn’t spoken much since entering the ruins. Ella stirred beside him, not speaking, but near enough that he felt that her hum almost returned. But it didn’t.

  Not here. Not this close to Bramblegate.

  They would move in the morning. And the silence would remain behind them.

  As the light broke the horizon in the morning, the forest was quieter. Not in sound, but in feeling. As if Bramblegate’s silence had seeped outward into the roots of the Silverwood. Mist hung low along the underbrush, clinging to branches and draping across old game trails like tattered veils. It dampened the breath and dulled even the rustle of leaves. No birdsong stirred the canopy. No distant call from deer or low chitter of treefolk echoed back. The only movement came from the soft steps of the group as they broke camp in silence.

  They left no trace, no ashes, no trampled ground, no scent marker if they could help it. Lianna moved with intent, her Ranger and Warden training at the forefront. She re-covered paths with light branchwork and layered false trails where necessary. Liosan had vanished early, already weaving through the perimeter like a wraith.

  Lianna led with more tension than the day before. Her ears twitched at every shift in the breeze, and Frostclaw stayed closer than usual, body low, ears flicking toward unseen cues. They were no longer merely navigating the wilds. They were slipping through the edge of watchful land.

  Xavier walked just behind the duo, his eyes distant but alert. The air felt heavier here, the faint pulse of ley energy more muted than near Rynthavael. He could still sense the distant thread of Syr’Vailen through the ley beneath his feet, but it had grown faint, more memory than song.

  Ella moved beside him, her bow already strung with an arrow in hand. She hadn’t spoken much since the night before. Her hum had returned briefly during the pre-dawn watch but had faded by the time they broke camp. There was a tightness to her expression, not pain, but focused intent. She matched Xavier’s pace exactly, her movements economical, practiced.

  Sihri trailed a few steps behind them, not quite grumbling, but certainly not at ease. Her foot caught on a root and she hissed softly, brushing the damp leaves away. "At least a tunnel has got the decency to stay level," she muttered, brushing dew from her legs.

  "And collapse behind you," Lythara said, her voice neutral as she passed just beside the Rabbitkin.

  Sihri scowled. "You say that like it is a bad thing."

  "Only if you're planning to go back." Rejoined the succubus.

  It had become something of a pattern between them. Whenever the terrain turned rough or the forest grew too thick, Sihri would grumble about tunnels, and Lythara would answer with the same dry retort. Neither admitted it, but the banter had begun to soften the space between them. A kind of rhythm had formed, sharp-edged but familiar.

  Lythara scanned the trees, crimson eyes sweeping left and right. She walked near the flank but was never far from reach. Her hand rested lightly on the hilt of her blade, and the faint shimmer of mana around her wrists showed she was keeping at least one enchantment at the ready.

  The terrain changed gradually. Slopes thickened with stone roots and uneven footing, the beginning of the ancient ground that bordered Arenvalis. Patches of moss-covered rock jutted from the forest floor, and narrow gullies cut through the brush like old scars.

  Liosan reappeared near a twisted maple, giving a flick of his fingers and tapping twice against his thigh before pointing up the incline.

  Lianna nodded without hesitation. "Higher ground. Better visibility."

  They moved as one, climbing the narrow incline with care. The air changed with each step, cooler, drier, touched by a faint wind that smelled of pine smoke and old stone.

  At the ridge, the trees broke just enough to offer a broad western view. The sky was pale and stretched, and for a moment, all was still. Then they saw it.

  Far on the horizon, dark tendrils of smoke rose in thick, steady columns. Not one. Not two. Many.

  Ironhaven burned.

  The smoke was not the lazy gray of campfires or village hearths. It was black. Roiling. Alive with motion and heat. It stretched upward in great towers, clawing at the sky.

  No one spoke at first. Frostclaw growled low. Valkra stiffened, her ears flat, muscles tense. Even the wind felt sharper here, as if it carried the memory of something more than flame.

  Xavier was the first to breathe. "Verdantspire," he said softly. "They moved."

  Lianna crouched at the ridge, narrowing her eyes. Her hand shaded her brow. "More than one burn point. Multiple fires. Deliberate positioning. That’s not wild. That’s strategy."

  Ella took a slow breath. "They’re drawing eyes. Giving us room."

  "And giving the gods something else to watch," Lythara added. "Divine focus is like a lantern in the dark. They just made another light."

  Sihri folded her arms. "Yeah, and drew every moth in a mile to it. That much smoke brings more than attention. It brings response."

  "It brings questions," Xavier said. "And noise. That may be all we need."

  They watched the fire for a few minutes longer. The smoke didn’t fade. If anything, it grew darker, thicker, whipped by rising air.

  "There’s risk in this," Lianna said finally. "They’re burning a snake den to distract the hawks."

  "It will work," Xavier said. "Because it has to."

  Liosan tapped his thigh again and gestured northward. He did not point toward the smoke. He pointed to movement, not people, but dust shifting in the air. Patrols might be sweeping west already.

  Lianna rose. "We move. Stay below the ridge line. East curve first, then hook north."

  No one argued and they descended into shadow again, the firelight of the horizon behind them.

  As they walked, the implications grew louder in silence. Verdantspire had risked open retaliation. Attacks like these weren’t surgical; they were statements. Messages written in fire.

  Lythara walked beside Xavier for a time. Her voice was soft, but steady. "That was bold, and reckless. They don’t know who might answer. Chainsworn, the military, or something worse."

  "They know the price," Xavier replied.

  She gave a half-nod. "Then so do we."

  Sihri glanced toward the smoke one last time. "They lit the fire. Hope someone’s ready to carry the torch."

  Behind them, the wind shifted bringing the smoke of the burning slaver town towards the ruins of one of its victims, and Bramblegate grew smaller with every step.

  The lowlands near Arenvalis held a tension that could not be measured in miles or weather. It was in the air, in the shape of the land, in the way the birds were no longer singing and the insects fell quiet by dusk. Even without borders marked by stone or flag, they knew when they had crossed from wild soil into claimed ground. Land they had only recently fled and now willingly returned to.

  The change was subtle. The underbrush grew thinner, yet more orderly. Trees stood straighter, less wild in posture. Paths once twisted by nature now curved with purpose, remnants of old trails woven into the shape of the land. The wild had not retreated, but it had been pushed, coaxed into alignment by ancient hands.

  Lianna halted near a stone outcrop just past a dry creekbed. Her posture sharpened instantly; one hand raised in warning. The group gathered around her as she pointed to a boulder embedded in the hillside. On its surface, a rune pulsed faintly, a series of interwoven lines and spirals etched deep and glowing dim blue beneath the rising sun.

  "Watching ward," she said quietly. "Divine signature. It is not triggered by movement, just records it."

  Ella stepped beside her, crouching low. "Still active. Old, but reinforced recently. Tied to the Edict."

  Xavier stepped forward, studying the rune. His brow furrowed as he knelt, examining its construction. It was layered, not a single glyph but a latticework of intent. He could feel the pulse of it beneath his skin, not strong, but persistent. The lines were not just decorative. They followed logic and pattern.

  He reached toward it but did not touch it. "It is almost like a listening spell," he murmured. "Only passive. There is no alert. No trap. Just memory."

  Ella nodded. "A divine observer. It records presence, sends that knowledge elsewhere. Somewhere that is still bound to the Edict most likely. Not immediately like an alarm, but it adds to a greater weight."

  "Can I learn it?" Xavier asked.

  She glanced at him. "You are starting to see how the language works. Study it. Trace the logic. Do not copy it, understand it."

  He nodded and pulled out his journal, sketching the rune carefully. As he did, faint hints of its structure began to settle in his mind. Not just the shape, but the intention behind it: awareness, clarity, presence. He would not be able to recreate it, not yet, but he could learn from it.

  Lythara stood watch, her stance stiff. "These are not Chainsworn markings. They are temple runes. Only priests or sanctioned wardens can place them."

  "Same source," Lianna muttered. "The Edict does not care which hands it moves through, only that they obey."

  Sihri scowled, stepping around the ward. "So they are watching. Not just people, gods."

  From then on, they moved with greater care. They camped on stone when they could, soft ground when they must. Always cold, always hidden, but when the ground was stable and the air quiet, they began to train.

  Each evening, after making camp and setting watches, the group would clear a space among the brush and stretch of earth. Wooden weapons were drawn from their packs, carved roughly but balanced well enough for practice. While they took turns amongst themselves, Sihri and Lianna sparred often, each testing the other in close strikes and fast movement, and Xavier often trained with Ella using paired short blades, his Vaeltheris shifting into a dulled training form each time they crossed weapons. He began to notice something new. Each time he fought, each time he moved with the blade, patterns came more easily. Movements he had not drilled suddenly felt familiar. Parries, footwork, angled strikes, skills he should have needed weeks to refine seemed to settle into his muscles as if remembered from a life he had never lived. The blade was teaching him. Or perhaps more accurately, the knowledge bound within Vaeltheris was seeping into him. Not in words or flashes of memory, but in instinct, in rhythm, in form.

  Even Lythara joined the drills, moving with deceptive smoothness, her style marked by elegant, sharp arcs. She rotated between facing Xavier and Ella, offering quiet corrections or unexpected feints that forced them to adapt. Liosan never sparred long but slipped between mock duels to test reactions, darting like a shadow. Sihri grumbled about his habit of stealing hits, but her tone grew lighter with each match.

  It was not about show. It was preparation. They knew what lay ahead would not be kind. So, they trained. They learned each other’s rhythms and adjusted. Timing, reach, pressure, weight. Learning not only their own rhythm, skills and limits but each other’s and how to complement them. The hours of silence between movement began to feel less hollow, filled now with breath and sweat and shared resolve.

  Frostclaw and Valkra circled or watched from the perimeter, alert but calm. The animals understood what the group was doing. They too knew the smell of coming battle.

  Each night, when the sparring was done, they returned to silence. But it no longer felt empty.

  For three more days, they wound their way deeper into Arenvalis territory. Glyphs appeared with increasing frequency, carved into stone markers, set into trees, even painted in fading oils along old shrine walls. Some glowed with quiet energy, others were inert, but each one reminded them they were being observed.

  Liosan marked every glyph in silence, altering their course subtly each time to avoid drawing direct attention. The group followed, their paths winding farther from the roads and deeper through forgotten paths.

  On the seventh day, they came upon a field marked by a battle long past. Broken weapons jutted from the earth like rusted thorns. Grass grew in tangled patterns, avoiding places where shields and armor still rotted beneath the soil. In the center, divine sigils hovered faintly above the ground, rotating in slow, silent rhythm.

  Lianna knelt, her voice low. "Do not step inside."

  Even Liosan did not stray far. He crouched nearby, eyes narrowed, motionless.

  Lythara circled the edge, gaze locked on the hovering symbols. "These are not common sanctifications. Too old. Too precise. It is not a remembrance site."

  Ella nodded. "I see no connection to Solara or the Radiant gods. The edges are... wrong. They likewise are not tied to Danu or the Veiled gods. This feels of something from the Boundless pantheon"

  Lianna rose slowly, dusting her fingers off. "This feels like a focus point. Not divine worship. A conduit, maybe. I have seen patterns like this in places Verdantspire avoids."

  Xavier watched the sigils twist slowly above the ground, their motion too smooth, too quiet. "Could this be a preparation site?"

  "Possibly," Lythara said, her voice quieter now. "Not a place of death, but something waiting beneath it. I have seen wards like this used to preserve a presence. Not rest or peace. It is more a form of maintenance."

  Ella frowned, her expression hardening. "These runes hum like binding glyphs, but they are not aligned to hold anything out. They are holding something in."

  No one spoke for a moment.

  Lianna finally stepped back. "It is a tether. Whatever battle happened here... someone, or something, claimed the ground afterward."

  Xavier exhaled through his nose, thoughtful. "Then this is not a scar. It is a seed."

  The group gave the field a wide berth. Whatever purpose the hovering sigils served, none of them wanted to see what waited underneath.

  On the tenth day, the hills began to rise. Stone veins ran like scars beneath their feet. Shrines became more frequent, some whole, others half-buried or shattered. One bore a statue of a faceless figure with open hands. Another had been wrapped in vines so thick even Lianna's blade could not part them.

  At twilight on the twelfth day, they crested a final ridge. The light stretched long across the land, painting the sky in muted gold. And there, rising from the earth like a buried crown, stood Thandor's Reach.

  The capital of Arenvalis, pale stone towers, walls of etched granite. On high poles banners of faded authority hung fluttering in the high breeze. They did not move toward the gates. Instead, they headed towards the base of the rise. At the foot of the slope, hidden by roots and the bones of a long-collapsed hill road, they found what they were searching for. A narrow vent tucked behind overgrown bramble and broken masonry. It was not a sewer; it wasn’t really a tunnel meant for normal people. Instead, it was a vent, a servant path. But most importantly it was supposed to be forgotten.

  It was open. Just enough. Xavier knelt beside the stonework, fingers brushing along the broken rim. The seal was fractured, not shattered, but split with precision.

  Liosan checked for traps and found none. He could feel that there had been magic, long dissolved. He signed it clearly.

  Ella examined the edge, fingertips glowing faintly. "This was sealed by ritual. Divine-scribed. But someone broke it from the inside."

  Lianna frowned. "Not our plan. Verdantspire did not open this."

  Xavier stood slowly. "Then someone else is already inside."

  The air that spilled from the vent was cold. It carried damp stone, iron, and something older. Something that had been waiting.

  "Prepare yourselves," he said quietly. "We’re going in blind." And without another word, they descended into the dark.