By the time the sun cracked over the quarry ridge, Bran had already been awake for two hours, and the blade was gone. Not destroyed — hidden. After Colm had gone back upstairs the night before, Bran had waited until the old man's breathing settled into sleep, then crept down and moved the blade — wrapped in oiled cloth, buried beneath a loose stone under the woodpile behind the forge, the one place in Ashvale that was still, technically, his. His father had shown him that hiding spot years ago, back when hiding things meant a stolen sweet cake or a carved toy, not something that pulsed like it was breathing. He hadn't slept. Every time he'd closed his eyes, he'd heard that sound again — the gasp, the silence, the scream made of thunder. He told himself it was exhaustion playing tricks. He didn't believe it. "You're late," Colm said, without looking up from the ledger spread across the workbench. The old man's fingers were stained black from ink and older still from decades of soot

The widow's warning followed Bran into sleep and was still there when he woke, curled tight in his chest like a fist that wouldn't open. He'd meant to move the blade again that night — somewhere farther, somewhere the loose stone under the woodpile couldn't be guessed at by anyone clever enough to look. He never got the chance. The screaming started just after midnight. Bran shot upright on his pallet in the storeroom, heart already hammering before his mind caught up to why. The sound came from the street — not one voice, but several, panicked and overlapping, followed by the unmistakable crash of a cart overturning and the splintering groan of a stall collapsing. He was at the shutters in seconds, prying them open just enough to see. The street was chaos. Lantern light swung wildly as people fled toward the eastern wall, away from the well square, away from something Bran couldn't yet see past the crowd. A man stumbled past the forge window, blood running from a gash across his

Colm didn't speak again until they were back inside the forge, the door barred, the shutters drawn tight against a street still buzzing with frightened voices. The patrolman had let Bran go — for now. For tonight, the older one had said, in a tone that made clear this wasn't mercy so much as postponement. The guild will send someone with proper authority to sort this out. Don't leave Ashvale. As if Bran had anywhere else to go. Colm paced the length of the workshop floor, his nightshirt still untucked, his hands dragging through what remained of his gray hair. He hadn't looked at Bran directly since they'd left the square. "Say something," Bran finally said. "What do you want me to say?" Colm rounded on him, and for the first time since Bran had come to live under his roof, there was no cruelty in the old man's face — only fear, raw and unguarded, the kind that stripped away every ounce of the bitter authority he usually wore like armor. "You forged a weapon that hurt something gu

Bran left through the gap in the eastern wall where two loose stones had never been properly mortared back into place — a detail every child in Ashvale learned sooner or later, useful for sneaking out past curfew to the quarry ponds, useless for anything that mattered until tonight. The sky hadn't lightened yet, but it had thinned, that particular shade of near-dawn dark that meant Bran had less time than he wanted. He kept low along the tree line bordering the trade road, satchel against his hip, the wardiron a steady weight against his ribs. He'd made it perhaps a quarter mile past the wall when he first felt it — the prickling certainty of being watched. He stopped listening. Nothing but wind through the scrub grass, the distant creak of the quarry cranes beginning their morning groan. He told himself it was nerves. A boy running from a town that had watched him fight something impossible, a boy who'd just learned his memories weren't entirely his own to keep — of course he'd fe

Cole didn't get the chance to answer Bran's question.The sound reached them first — hoofbeats, several riders moving fast along the north fork, too disciplined to be merchants and too many to be a simple patrol. Cole was on his feet again before Bran had fully registered the noise, his earlier languor gone entirely, replaced by the same coiled alertness he'd shown when the Warden emerged from the trees."That's not good timing," Cole muttered, already kicking dirt over the cold fire pit, scattering the camp's signs of habitation with practiced efficiency. "Guild wouldn't ride this hard for a runaway apprentice. Not unless someone's convinced them you're worth the horses.""Who else would it be?""That," Cole said grimly, "is what worries me."The riders broke from the treeline moments later — six of them, armored not in guild colors but in a dark, unmarked gray that told Bran nothing except that these were not men who wanted to be easily identified. Their leader reined in hard at the