Veyna rose, her hands raw from burial work. Her eyes were steady, but a shadow coiled behind them. “Then the north won’t wait. We move at first light.”The scarred woman’s jaw ticked. “You’re not leading this march, Keeper.”Her voice carried steel. And beneath it mistrust.Dren stepped forward, shoulders stiff. “We didn’t ask to lead. But we know what hunts us. Without us, you’ll all be bones before the next ridge.”Tension stretched, brittle as glass. Spears shifted. Hands twitched on hilts.The burned man hacked another cough, then rasped, “Enough. We don’t have the numbers to split. The Wastes don’t care for grudges.”For a moment, no one moved. Then the scarred woman ripped her spear from the ground and stalked away, leaving the air thick with her fury.Veyna exhaled slowly, her hand brushing the hilt of her blade as though to remind herself it was still there.Dren turned his eyes north. The ridges rose jagged against the sky, black teeth waiting. Somewhere beyond them, the Arch

The march began before the sun fully cleared the horizon, the world around them a wasteland of frost and ash. The land grew crueler with each mile: skeletal trees frosted black, rivers frozen mid-current, stone cliffs cut with scars like claw-marks. Wind howled down from the mountains, carrying with it the tang of iron and something older, something that prickled the Archive’s mark in Dren’s veins.The Ashborn set a relentless pace. They moved as if the land itself could rise and swallow them if they lingered too long. Kaelen kept stride without falter, her cloak snapping in the wind, her scarred hand bare to the cold as though daring the frost to bite her.Veyna walked at Dren’s side, eyes scanning the ridges with the precision of a blade’s edge. She didn’t speak much, but when she did, it was sharp, practical. “Tracks there. Fresh. Not beasts. Too clean. Echo-walkers, maybe.”The Ashborn adjusted course at once. No questions, no delay.Dren’s gaze lingered on the prints, unease twis

The first arrow hissed past Dren’s cheek before the wind carried the twang of the bow. He ducked instinctively, shoving Veyna toward the cliff wall as the air filled with the sound of string and steel.Figures broke from the stone above hooded, wrapped in furs stripped with shadow dye, sliding down ropes and chains like carrion birds. Their movements were precise, rehearsed. Not raiders. Hunters.Dren’s sword was already in his hand, the steel catching what little light there was.Veyna blocked the next arrow with a flash of her blade, sparks spitting as it deflected into the stone. She spat a curse. “Too many!”Lira didn’t curse. She moved. One motion tore a knife from her belt, and with a flick it found the throat of the nearest climber. He dropped without a sound, his rope jerking as he fell into the snow below. Her face never changed.“Eyes high,” she snapped, her scar stark against the storm’s gray. “They want us penned. Don’t let them circle.”Dren’s pulse roared. The Archive wh

The wind had changed.It no longer carried the burnt-metal tang of the ridge they had left behind, but a colder breath that smelled of snow and stone and distance. The storm had broken in the night, though not cleanly the sky was still a bruise of cloud, smothering the stars, leaving only a thin smear of light that might have been moon or might have been the Archive bleeding through.Dren kept walking. His boots sank into black silt with every step, the remnants of the ash tide still clinging to the land. The silence pressed on him harder than the storm ever had. It wasn’t the peace of survival; it was the silence of absence, of something pulled away and waiting to return.Behind him, Veyna’s footsteps kept time with his own. She walked close enough that he could feel the heat of her presence, but she hadn’t spoken since they left the ridge. Her sword was sheathed, but her hand rested near the hilt like it had grown into her.The third presence the scarred woman kept her distance. Her

The wind sharpened the further north they pushed, carrying with it not just cold but an unsettling hum that seemed to bleed from the horizon itself. It wasn’t mere weather anymore; the very air felt charged, trembling with some buried resonance.They trudged over plains cracked with frozen seams, black stone jutting through the ice like bones left from a colossal beast. Above them, ribbons of pale green and violet bled across the night sky, twisting into shapes that refused to hold. Sometimes they resembled wings. Other times, faces. And every so often, the aurora vibrated with a low, pulsing sound like an echo from an unseen throat.Elyra tightened her cloak and kept her head down. Her legs ached from the march, but it was her ears that burned. The hum pressed into her skull, a reminder that the Archive was no longer myth or symbol. It was real, and it was close.Garran walked ahead, shoulders hunched against the cold, the great axe strapped across his back glinting faintly when auro