The forest crackled with distant fire.Kael tightened the straps on his gauntlet and stepped onto the muddied trail. Ash floated through the mist like dead snow. Behind him, Nyra adjusted her satchel and scanned the treetops. Lira walked on his other side, blades sheathed but fingers twitching with unease.“They’ve already reached the vale,” Kael muttered.Lira nodded grimly. “And they’re burning everything behind them.”The rider who’d warned them had vanished into the trees before dawn. Whether he was a scout or a survivor no longer mattered. What mattered was the glass beast.Kael didn’t know what it looked like. He didn’t need to.He could feel it.A pressure against the flame in his chest. A tension in the earth itself. Something ancient had been disturbed. Something not meant to walk among the living.They pushed east. The trees thinned and the world opened into low hills slick with rain. Black banners flapped in the wind. Kael stopped at the crest of a ridge.Below, the Mirror

Kael’s knuckles whitened on the reins as the northern wind lashed against his face. Snow burst around him in wild flurries, stinging his skin, biting through the seams in his cloak. The forest was gone now. The trees behind them had thinned into distant shadows. Ahead stretched a plain of jagged frost and hidden dangers.The Wastes.Nothing lived here long. The wind stole breath, and the ice held secrets no one was meant to find. But they had no choice. The court was hunting him, and the map burned into his memory spoke of something buried beneath this frozen land. Something that could tear the curse wide open.Nyra rode just behind him, her eyes unreadable beneath the hood pulled low. She had not spoken since the last camp. Kael had not asked why. He did not want the answer.A shrill cry echoed across the plain.Kael jerked his head up. It was not wind. Not wolf. It was something worse.The horse shivered beneath him.Nyra pulled closer, voice low. “It’s hunting again.”Kael scanned

The forest was too quiet.Kael stood with his hand resting on the hilt of his blade, eyes scanning the crooked trees ahead. No birds. No wind. Just the weight of silence pressing against his shoulders like a second sword.They had left the ruins behind three nights ago, slipping through a fissure in the stone wall before the Wyrmspawn could circle back. Nyra led them north, following a trail only she could see, one carved into the land like memory. She said it would take them to the edge of the Mist Vale, where the mapmaker’s outpost had once stood.Kael didn’t care about the destination. Only the tension in the air. The way every step felt like they were walking into a trap already set.“We’re being followed,” he said.Nyra did not look back. She walked ahead, eyes forward, cloak stirring as if it remembered wind that no longer moved. “You’re only now sure?”Kael grunted.Behind them, Mirelia adjusted the satchel slung across her back. “How long?”“Since dusk,” Kael answered.She fro

Kael’s boots sank into the moss as he pushed deeper into the vale. Fog clung to the ground like breath from some sleeping god. The trees here were older than memory, their twisted trunks hollowed by time, their branches stretched like arms in mourning. Even the wind dared not move freely.Behind him, Nyra moved without sound. Her eyes scanned the shadows while her fingers rested lightly on her blade. She had said nothing since they crossed the threshold of the vale. Neither had Kael. The silence felt like an agreement. Or maybe a warning.They were no longer in a place where words held weight.Kael reached the base of a ruined archway — stone blackened with age and covered in a thick web of vines. Runes lined the edge, faint but still burning faintly with blue light. He traced them with his gloved hand.“This is it,” he said.Nyra stepped beside him. “The path beneath the vale.”He nodded. “Where the old ones vanished. Where the fire-bearers were born.”She crouched, running her hand

The roar of the storm rolled overhead as Kael crouched by the shattered bridge. Lightning split the sky, casting jagged shadows across the broken stone. Behind him, Lira kept her bow drawn, eyes flicking toward every shifting branch. The wind carried the scent of ash and iron, a scent Kael had come to recognize too well. It meant death was near.“I saw something move,” Lira muttered.Kael nodded. He had seen it too. Not just movement, but something wrong with the shadows themselves. Like they peeled away from the trees and slithered into the clearing ahead.They had followed the map blindly, deeper into the forest Nyra called Hollowroot, guided by the markings the Archivist had burned into Kael’s blade. For days they had pressed forward, sleeping in shifts, speaking little. Nyra had become distant, her eyes hollow whenever she glanced toward the west.Now she stood with her arms folded, lips tight as she stared at the twisted roots that blocked the old trail. The forest here pulsed wi