Maya considered the question carefully before answering. "Your father's history runs deeper than most people realize, Thorne. The clover mage bloodline carries responsibilities that extend far beyond simply ruling a kingdom. I imagine there were relationships he cultivated quietly, allies he kept close but hidden, precisely because revealing them might have put those people at risk if his enemies ever learned of the connection.""You think the man we're about to meet is one of those hidden allies," Thorne said."It would explain a great deal," Maya said. "Why the ferryman recognized my sister and me so readily. Why he seemed to already sense your significance the moment he saw you standing on that riverbank. If your father truly maintained a friendship with the man who guards this island, it wouldn't be surprising if word of your existence, your bloodline, had already reached this place long before we ever arrived."Thorne absorbed this in silence, the weight of yet another hidden lay

Old Moth leaned forward with interest. "That aligns closely with what I understand of the great seer traditions. Your gift is remarkably similar to bloodline abilities I studied many decades ago, though I confess I never expected to witness one so pure and unaffected in my remaining years.""You studied seer bloodlines, Old Moth?" Ryn Ashenfang immediately asked, surprised."Extensively, in my younger years." Old Moth immediately said, a nostalgic gleam flickering in her eyes. "Before life took me down considerably more chaotic paths, I spent nearly two decades studying various forms of spiritual foresight under the tutelage of a rather eccentric hermit sage.""You've never mentioned that before." Wei Crossblade immediately said, raising an eyebrow."There are a great many things about my past I haven't mentioned, Wei Crossblade." Old Moth immediately replied with a mysterious smile that offered no further elaboration.The conversation continued flowing easily around the table, weavin

She didn't get the chance to finish. The old warrior's hand shot out, not toward her directly, but toward the space around her, and Thorne watched in horror as some invisible force lifted Maya bodily off the ground, the same force expanding outward a heartbeat later to catch each of them in turn — Sablen, Breck, Cael Dross, still groaning where he'd fallen against the shattered garden wall, and finally Thorne himself, all of them suddenly suspended helplessly in midair, gasping and struggling uselessly against a grip that felt like solid stone despite touching nothing physical at all."Telekinesis," Cael Dross managed to gasp out, his voice strained with the effort of fighting against a force he couldn't physically counter. "By the ancient clovers, he's holding all five of us at once, without even touching us.""I told you," the old warrior said grimly, striding forward with slow, deliberate steps, his sharp eyes sweeping across each of their suspended, struggling forms. "Strangers do

Elder Corwin's expression sharpened with sudden, focused interest. "The Hand of the Nameless One," he repeated slowly. "I had hoped that particular society had faded entirely into obscurity, along with most of the old threats my generation spent our lives combating. If they've resurfaced with this degree of organization behind Darius's campaigns, the danger here is considerably graver than I had allowed myself to believe.""You've heard of them before," Cael Dross said, watching the old elder carefully."I have fought against them before," Elder Corwin said, his voice dropping lower, touched with old, weary grief. "Decades ago, in my younger years, before either of us retreated to this isolated existence. The Hand serves powers far older and more dangerous than any single ambitious lord could ever hope to command alone. If they have chosen to invest this heavily in Darius's rise, it is not because they value his ambition. It is because his ambition serves some larger purpose of their

"Yes," Elder Corwin said, a faint, knowing smile touching his weathered features at the shock plainly written across Thorne's face. "A vault beneath the boiling river itself. I understand the concept sounds impossible on its face — water hot enough to scald flesh in seconds hardly seems like terrain suited to housing something as delicate as a hidden chamber. And yet it exists, and has existed for longer than either my brother or I have walked this earth.""How is that even possible?" Breck asked, leaning forward with open fascination now that the initial shock had settled into curiosity. "Wouldn't the heat alone make constructing anything down there impossible, let alone maintaining it across centuries?""The scholars who built it possessed knowledge of the old celestial arts far beyond what most practitioners understand today," Elder Corwin said. "The vault itself sits within a naturally occurring cavern, carved deep beneath the riverbed long before the boiling began, back when this