Pale streaks of dawn broke between the trees, thin as hammered silver.

The company walked in silence at first, their boots whispering through damp leaves. The air still held the chill of sleeplessness, and every sound felt softer than it should: even the creak of leather, even Thorne’s low chuff as he scouted ahead. No one wanted to break the fragile calm they’d reclaimed during the night.

Mist pooled between roots like breath caught in the throat of the forest. When it moved, it did so slowly, rolling over stones and fallen logs with an almost cautious grace. The light that filtered was weak and amber, enough to limn the edges of faces but not enough to reveal color.

Kiera hummed softly, the melody she had sung half-dreaming by the fire hours before. It steadied them. Theo joined in on a low whistle until Lyra muttered, “If we’re lucky, the trees will applaud.” But she smiled as she said it, and that was enough.

Bit by bit, the Wolhaven Forlaith began to open. The trunks spread wider apart, their pale bark reflecting the dawn like ghosted mirrors. Shafts of brighter light pushed through the canopy. Insects rose from wet moss, and the smell of earth gave way to the scent of long-dried streams and lichen-slick rock.

Boaz lifted his eyes to the slope ahead. Through the thinning trees, a gray clearing waited. Not an open meadow, exactly, but a shallow basin carved in the heart of the forest. The trees ringed it like watchers who dared not step closer.

“A break in the wood,” Telen murmured. “Natural, maybe. But it listens.”

“Everything in this forest listens,” Lyra said.

“But not everything answers,” Aldryn replied.

They descended the slope, boots scuffing through loose shale and pine needles until the ground flattened into a hollow. The air shifted here. It carried a steady outward breath that was soft but certain; wind that pressed against their faces no matter which way they turned. The grass leaned away from the center as though bent by an unseen will.

Thorne froze. His ears twitched, fur bristling just along the spine.

“Easy,” Boaz murmured, resting a hand on his shoulder. The lynx’s muscles were taut but still.

Twelve stones stood in the clearing, half-buried and slick with lichen, forming a rough circle. They weren’t tall, waist-high, maybe a little more, yet each carried the deliberate weight of intent. Even the fallen ones leaned inward.

“The pattern’s Terran, as most things in this part of the world are,” Aldryn said quietly, stepping near one without crossing into the circle. “Older than their tunnel-craft. Older than the runes you saw at the spire.”

Shaye squinted. “And the wind?”

Aldryn lifted his hand, letting his fingers hover in the air. The breeze pressed steadily outward, cool and dry. “A habit of the place,” he said. “It remembers pushing things away.”

Lyra plucked a dried reed and let it drop. It fell and skated sideways, sliding toward the outer rim before the wind flicked it aside entirely. “I don’t like places that breathe,” she muttered.

“No one asked you to,” Theo said, but his voice was thinner than his grin.

Kiera traced the air with her palm, the way she might sense a fever. “It feels wrong, not evil, just… refusing.”

Boaz took a cautious step forward until he could feel the wind begin to thrum against his chest. The Sigil warmed beneath his shirt, not with threat but with wary recognition, as if the power inside him knew what these stones were meant to keep.

“A boundary,” he said at last.

Telen nodded once. “We stay on this side of it.”

“Wise,” Aldryn murmured. “The Terrans built wards that lasted longer than their cities. Best not to test which kind this is.”

The company lingered at the edge. Even the familiars grew still. Kestel circled high above but never over the ring; Eira perched silent; Mika paced once around Lyra’s legs, hackles twitching. For a moment the forest itself seemed to hold its breath. Somewhere within the ring, a faint sound stirred: not a voice, not movement, only the shifting tone of the wind. It had rhythm now, almost speech.

Aldryn frowned. “Memory,” he whispered. “Old memory trying to speak.”

Boaz listened. The words never came, but the feeling did: a presence aware of them, patient, weighing.

He tightened his cloak, glancing around the clearing’s rim. “We keep moving,” he said quietly. “Around, not through. We don’t need to wake whatever’s waiting.”

Telen’s agreement was a nod; Shaye’s, a silent exhale. The others followed Boaz’s lead, circling the stones with the care of pilgrims, not trespassers.

Above them, the pale-barked canopy trembled. The wind held steady, outward and endless. They hadn’t gone twenty paces beyond the far edge of the clearing before the silence changed. Kestel cried sharply from above, a sound that cut and stopped all at once. Thorne’s head snapped toward the trees. Mika whined low, pacing backward, her paws soundless on the stone.

“Stay close,” Boaz said.

He scanned the treeline. The mist that had hovered over the hollow had begun to drift outward, curling between trunks in thin gray ribbons. At first he thought they were branches moving, but one of the ribbons thickened. It wasn’t air or fog, but a figure: broad, low, and solid, emerging soundlessly from the trees.

More followed.

They came not from behind or ahead but from everywhere at once, stepping through the mist as though it parted for them alone.

Each stood little more than chest-high to Boaz but was built like quarried stone: broad-shouldered, thick-necked, dense with muscle and weight. Their skin bore the pallor of those who seldom saw the sun, the color of ash dusted with gray. Some had beards bound in dull iron clasps, others none at all, but all shared the same hard stillness.

Their eyes were small against their heavy brows, gray-green and sensitive to the light. Even beneath the dim canopy, several blinked often, as though every glimmer hurt. They wore chainmail and hide, patched with hammered plates; their axes and spears looked shaped for narrow places, not forest paths.

A smell of deep earth came with them, cool, metallic, dry as the air of a sealed cavern.

They said nothing.

A dozen, now twenty, ringed the company before anyone had time to draw steel.

Kestel’s wings beat above in alarm. Thorne crouched, ready. Mika’s snarl was almost silent.

Boaz raised a hand, palm open. “We mean no…”

The nearest of the pale warriors moved his spear’s haft across his body. It wasn’t attack or defense, but a signal. The rest mirrored it in eerie unison.

“…harm,” Boaz finished, the word dying before it met the air.

The wind that had been blowing outward from the stone circle seemed to have reversed, pressing inward, drawing mist and leaf litter toward the center where the company stood.

“They’re… they’re Terran,” Theo whispered, voice cracking slightly. “Aren’t they?”

Aldryn nodded once, slow, uncertain. “They shouldn’t be here,” he murmured. “They hate the sun, and they are still bound by the curse, unlike our Aguan friends. No more than seven days away from their underground home, and probably half that, since they need to return in those seven days.”

One of the warriors stepped forward, eyes narrowing beneath his heavy brow. When he spoke, it was not in Common but in a low, rasping growl that rolled like stones grinding in a tunnel.

“Vorran duhl… rakh en dorra veth. Thrundak nar-ath kel…!”

The sounds were harsh, each syllable struck like metal on rock. Aldryn startled, his head tilting as he tried to catch meaning. “Old Terran,” he whispered. “I know only shards of it…” He lifted his hand slightly, answering with halting words that stumbled on his tongue:

“Na thorr ven… ka ven durra hald… frihn eth…”

The warrior’s eyes widened. A ripple moved through the group: helmeted heads turning, armor shifting in surprise. Several murmured to each other, their voices rumbling low:

“Harn dur melth…? Vorr dren tharn!”

Whatever Aldryn had said, it had startled them, but not soothed them. A second warrior barked a single word, sharp, commanding, and they all froze, weapons held at the ready. The one who had spoken first replied in a slower rhythm, tone wary, not hostile. The exchange sounded old, formal, like ritual.

Boaz glanced at Aldryn. “What are they saying?”

“I’m not sure,” Aldryn said. “Something about trespass… and oaths. I think.”

From behind the Terrans, a voice cut through the low exchange,
female, measured, still rough but clearer than the rest.

“Neh tol… kar brehn dorra.”

The warriors stepped aside. A woman approached, shorter than most of them, cloaked in stone-gray leather, her face half-shadowed by a hood. Her movements were precise, each step deliberate, confident. When she reached the edge of the ring of soldiers, she threw back her hood. Her skin was weathered and pale, her eyes black and polished as obsidian. She studied Boaz, Aldryn, then the others. She spoke in Common, slowly, as though each word cost her effort. Her voice had the weight of gravel shifting.

“You… not from down,” she said. “You walk where Terra dream. Not safe for you.”

Boaz inclined his head slightly. “We didn’t mean offense. We’re only passing through.”

The woman’s gaze hardened. “Through?” She glanced at the warriors and back. “No through. Only down… or gone.”

Aldryn took a small step forward, careful. “We seek no quarrel. Only the path east. The old ways.”

She frowned and muttered something to the others in their tongue:

“Vel nor veth kan dul nar. Reth ha men-kor.”

The Terrans shifted, glancing toward the circle of stones. Finally, the woman said, “You come with me. Speak no word. Touch no rock.” Her Common was broken but her tone needed no translation.

Boaz met her eyes. “Who are you?”

She hesitated before answering. “Duln,” she said. “Of no hall.” She turned and gestured toward the northern edge of the hollow, where the fog was thickest. “Come. Before they change their mind.”

And though none of them yet understood the danger they had stepped into, the company followed the outcast Duln into the waiting mist.

They followed her without speaking.

The Terran warriors parted as Duln moved, their heavy shapes half-lost in the mist. None lowered weapons until she passed, and their eyes stayed fixed on the company: flat, unreadable, like carved faces that had not yet decided to move.

Duln did not look to see if they followed. She simply walked, her stride short but unhurried, feet finding stone where the rest saw only fog. Each motion seemed deliberate, weighted; even the trees seemed to make room for her passing. The forest closed behind them. The outward wind faded, leaving a thicker stillness that rang faintly in the ears. Kestel circled once overhead, gave a soft cry, and settled into the canopy as though unwilling to leave them. Boaz glanced over his shoulder. The clearing was already gone, swallowed by distance and pale light.

“Anyone else feel,” Theo whispered, “like we just walked out of a grave that hadn’t decided it was empty?”

Lyra gave a thin smile. “I was trying not to.”

Duln stopped abruptly. “Quiet.”

Her Common was spare, the consonants rough and clotted, but the command in her tone was unmistakable.

They froze.

She listened a moment, nostrils flaring, and motioned them forward again. When they moved, she kept them off the main animal paths, weaving between roots and stones as though following a map only she could read.

The light thinned again. Overhead, branches tangled into gray lattice, filtering the daylight into narrow spears that glinted off her hair: a coarse, silvery brown that caught like iron filings.

After a long while, the sound of water reached them: a slow trickle, a spring or seep beneath stone. Duln knelt beside it, cupped her hands, and drank without ceremony. She motioned to the others. “You. Drink. Fast.”

Boaz crouched beside her, studying the small vein of water that ran clear over smooth rock. “Is it safe?”

Duln’s black eyes flicked to him. “You ask too much. Drink.”

He obeyed, if only to keep peace. The water was clean and cold, metallic on the tongue, like rain against iron.

The others followed in turn, except Telen, who watched her instead of drinking. “Terra water doesn’t run above ground,” he said softly to no one in particular. “Yet here it finds us.”

Shaye nudged him. “Maybe it’s time to stop being surprised when the world stops making sense.”

“Noted.”

When they finished, Duln stood and faced them. “You not stay here,” she said. “We move more. Little time.”

“Time for what?” Theo asked.

She shook her head once. “Night.”

Kiera frowned. “We’ve walked since dawn. We’re already losing light.”

Duln gave her a long, unreadable look and spoke in her own tongue under her breath. It was rough, short syllables that sounded like a warning or a prayer.

They moved again. The land sloped gently upward, trees twisting into thinner forms, bark peeling in pale curls. Once, Duln crouched to touch the ground, fingers brushing a faint groove in the soil. Whatever she read there made her jaw tighten.

Aldryn drew alongside her, matching her pace. “Those men, your kin…” he began, but she cut him off with a raised hand.

“No speak of them.” Her tone was final.

Boaz exchanged a glance with Lyra, who mouthed silently, ‘friendly sort.’ Still, they followed. At last Duln halted beneath a rise of stone that jutted from the forest floor like a broken tooth. Moss grew thick over it, dark and wet, and the air around it carried a faint mineral tang. She studied the slope, nodded to herself, and motioned for them to gather.

“Here,” she said. “Wait.”

She ducked into a shadowed alcove where the rock met root. When she emerged a moment later, she carried several thick branches bound with vine. Their purpose became apparent a moment later when she snapped one against the stone edge, striking a spark from the ring on her finger, and the pitch caught with a dull orange glow.

Kestel shrieked softly at the sudden light. Eira shifted on Kiera’s arm, feathers bristling.

The glow painted Duln’s face in copper and shadow. “They no follow here,” she said. “You camp. Quiet. Light small.”

“And you?” Boaz asked.

“Watch,” she said. It was not an invitation. She turned and climbed the low rise until she was half-silhouetted against the dimming sky, the torchlight licking the edges of her cloak.

For a while no one spoke. The company unpacked in silence, laying down cloaks and checking weapons out of habit more than fear. Theo used the burning torch as a starter for a small fire from dry moss and a broken twig; Aldryn muttered a word and the fire steadied, low and smokeless.

Kiera eased herself onto a flat stone and rubbed her temples. “We keep meeting strangers who know more about us than we do about them.”

“That’s most people,” Lyra said. “We just ask fewer questions.”

Boaz watched the faint line of Duln’s silhouette on the ridge. Even at a distance, she seemed carved rather than living; each motion was purposeful, precise, like the Terran warriors who had surrounded them.

He couldn’t decide if she was their rescuer or their jailer.

Aldryn lowered himself beside him with a soft grunt. “Old Terran,” he said quietly. “It’s been centuries since I’ve heard it spoken.”

“You understood some of it,” Boaz said.

“Fragments.” Aldryn drew a symbol in the dirt, a rough triangle intersected by three slashes. “They said something about oaths. And stone that remembers. I think they believed we violated a border.”

“We didn’t cross the ring.”

“Sometimes merely being near is enough,” Aldryn replied. “Especially to those who guard what they fear.”

Boaz looked toward Duln again. “And her?”

“She speaks their tongue,” Aldryn said. “And ours, after a fashion. That’s rare. But she carries herself differently, more surface in her manner. I suspect she’s spent time away from the deep halls before.”

Boaz frowned. “You mean above ground.”

Aldryn nodded once. “Which makes her either brave… or unwelcome.” The old mage’s eyes gleamed faintly in the firelight. “Best we don’t ask which, not yet.”

Lyra rolled onto one elbow. “You’re both whispering like gravekeepers. Either of you planning to sleep?”

“I’m trying,” Theo murmured, already half-curled beneath his cloak.

Kiera smiled faintly. “If she wanted us dead, she’s had chances.”

“That’s not comforting,” Jaxson muttered. He tugged his hood low.

Boaz remained awake longest. The fire had dwindled to a pulse of coals, their heat gentle on his palms. Above, Kestel and Eira kept silent watch from the branches; Thorne’s slow breathing rumbled beside him like a purr trapped in stone.

On the ridge, Duln stood unmoving, her outline against the dark sky unbroken. The torch beside her had long since guttered out, yet she still seemed to glow faintly, whether from the last breath of its ember or something deeper, Boaz couldn’t tell.

The forest lay utterly still. Even the night insects had gone quiet.

When at last he drifted toward sleep, the memory of the Terran voices still echoed faintly in his mind: gravel, iron, and the sound of a language too heavy to rise from the ground.

Gray dawn seeped through the branches, soft and cold as river mist.

The fire had died sometime in the night. What remained was a faint warmth in the soil, like the memory of a heartbeat. Boaz stirred first, hand resting on Thorne’s flank. The lynx’s ears flicked toward the ridge, where Duln still stood: a motionless shape against the paling sky. She apparently hadn’t moved all night.

Kiera rose, pulling her cloak tighter. “She didn’t sleep,” she murmured.

“Or breathe,” Theo mumbled from beneath his blanket.

“She breathed,” Lyra said. “I checked. Barely.”

Boaz glanced toward Aldryn, who was crouched near the ashes, tracing slow circles in the dirt with the end of his staff.

“Did you sleep?” Boaz asked.

“Enough to remember dreams,” the old sorcerer said. “Or warnings. Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

Duln descended the ridge. Her cloak was damp with dew, her hood drawn low to shield her eyes from the growing light. When she spoke, her Common was as blunt and heavy as the stones around them.

“You wake,” she said. “Good. We go.”

Boaz rose. “Where?”

“East,” she answered. “You said east. I show.”

“Show what?” Lyra asked.

“Road,” Duln said simply, as though that was enough. She started walking.

The company traded uncertain looks, gathered their gear, and followed. The ground was slick beneath their boots, littered with pale bark and roots that curled like bone. They walked in silence for a time, until Kestel circled overhead and gave a brief cry. Duln flinched, just barely: a quick tightening of her shoulders before she pulled her hood further forward.

“You’re from Durn-Kelmar,” Aldryn said at last.

Duln did not look back. “Yes.”

“You’ve been above ground for a few days,” he said.

She hesitated. “Long enough.”

Boaz stepped beside the Terran woman. “The Sundering still binds your people?”

She gave a single nod. “Stone calls us home. Too long away, the call kills.”

“And yet you live.”

Duln didn’t answer at once. Her jaw shifted once beneath the hood. “For now,” she said.

The forest pressed close, its silence thick as cloth. Boaz could hear the muffled thud of his own heartbeat, the scuff of Duln’s heavy boots on damp soil.

He said quietly, “The Agua lived under the same curse. But that’s changed now.”

“I know,” she said.

Aldryn raised his head. “You’ve seen others of their kind?”

“No,” Duln said. “But the stone feels the change. The rhythm different now.”

She tapped her chest with a thick finger. “When the water-folk broke their chain, the air changed. The deep heard it.”

“The Sigil,” Kiera said softly.

Boaz looked down. “When I bound the leaf of water, their curse lifted. Or began to. But I didn’t mean for…”

“No one means for breaking,” Duln interrupted. “But once stone cracks, it spreads.” Her tone held no blame, but neither comfort.

They continued walking until they came to a stream running shallow through the roots. Duln crouched and dipped her hand into the water, letting it run through her fingers. She cupped her hands and drank.

“How is it that you stand here even after a few days of sunlight?”

She looked up at him directly for the first time. Her eyes were darker than pitch, reflecting nothing.

“Sun cuts,” she said. “Burns the inside of my head. I cover.” She touched the edge of her hood. “But yes. Should be dead.”

“Why aren’t you?” Boaz asked.

Her answer came after a long pause. “Because I must walk. Until I cannot.”

The simplicity of it silenced them.

Boaz looked to Aldryn. “She said she’s from Durn-Kelmar. That must be due east from us by now, isn’t it?”

The old man nodded slowly. “Yes, beneath the Crests. It was one of the last great halls before the Sundering.”

Duln rose, brushing water from her hands. “It still is,” she said. “But not for you.”

Theo looked up. “Meaning?”

“Meaning stone remembers who left,” she said. “And who broke.”

Boaz’s chest tightened. “The Sigil.”

“Yes.”

She started walking again, her boots grinding against gravel. “We go. Talk later. Too near my kin.”

Kiera frowned. “I thought they let us leave.”

“They let you,” Duln said. “Not me.”

They followed her deeper into the pale wood, the morning light flickering through leaves like breath through smoke. Duln never looked back, but her hand once brushed the rough bark of a tree as if steadying herself. For a moment, Boaz thought he heard a faint hum from the earth beneath his boots. It was low, rhythmic, like a heartbeat beneath stone. He didn’t know if it came from the forest… or from the Sigil itself. The hours passed beneath a paling sky.

By midday the mist had burned away, leaving long spears of light slanting through the canopy. The ground turned drier, the roots thicker, the forest quieter than before. Even the birds seemed to avoid the company’s path. They spoke little. The events of the morning, the Terran sentries, Duln’s strange endurance, the mention of Durn-Kelmar, hung between them like a thread no one dared pull.

Boaz felt the weight of it most keenly. The Sigil at his chest had cooled again, but it pulsed faintly with every step, as if the earth itself were aware of their direction.

By late afternoon they came upon a low shelf of stone overlooking a shallow ravine where a thin stream wound silver through moss and shadow. Duln lifted a hand, the first sign she meant to stop.

“We rest,” she said simply, and sank to one knee beside the water.

The company set down their packs in wary silence. Above, the wind moved softly through the pale-barked branches, whispering like distant voices half-remembered.

They rested beside the ravine until the light turned amber through the trees.

Duln crouched by the water, washing her hands in slow, deliberate motions. Her reflection wavered: pale skin, shadowed eyes, lines carved deep as veins in granite. When she finally spoke, her voice was rough but steadier than before, like gravel smoothed by flow.

“You keep east,” she said, not looking up. “You walk toward the roots of the Crests.”

Boaz nodded. “We do.”

“You come near Durn-Kelmar,” she said. “Too near for safe.”

Theo glanced at Aldryn. “Is there any safe left in this world?”

Lyra smirked. “Not since breakfast.”

But Aldryn’s gaze stayed on Duln. “You say ‘too near.’ Why?”

Her jaw tightened. She lifted her head, eyes narrowing at the fading light through the trees. “Because the halls remember the breaking. Stone still mourns it.”

“The breaking of the Sigil,” Boaz said quietly.

She looked at him then, truly looked, and her dark eyes flickered, halfway between recognition and fear. “You know this.”

Boaz hesitated. “Only what Aldryn told us.”

The old sorcerer’s voice came softer, more patient now. “When the war ended, and the Triune Sigil lay in three parts, each race took its leaf and returned home. The bond that once joined us… snapped. It cursed the land, not by will, but by consequence. The same power that bound became the power that divided.”

Duln nodded slowly. “Yes. That wound runs deep.” She pressed her palm to the ground, fingers splayed. “Stone remembers wholeness. Now it sleeps angry. Hungry for what was taken.”

Theo frowned. “Hungry stone. That’s comforting.”

“Not hunger to eat,” she said. “Hunger to bind again.”

Aldryn’s eyes lifted. “To be made whole.”

Duln’s voice lowered. “Yes. You carry that sound now. The binding fire. Stone feels it. It wants you where break began.”

Boaz’s hand went to the Sigil beneath his shirt. “And where is that?”

She gave a short laugh, dry, humorless. “Everywhere and nowhere. Terra holds part. Agua holds part. Alta took theirs high and lost it in cold sky. Huma…” she looked at Boaz, “…forgot.” Silence settled around them. Even the water’s murmur seemed to fade.

Kiera spoke first, gentle. “You said the halls mourn. What about the people?”

Duln hesitated. The answer seemed to cost her. “Terra people remember with shame. We left the war. We sealed the doors. Said no more fight, no more blood. But curse followed us down. Stone closed its lungs. Now we breathe it in.”

Aldryn’s tone softened. “And you defied that.”

She gave a faint, grim smile. “Someone must.”

The light shifted again. Through the trees, the last of the sun fell like dust across her hood. She flinched, pulling it tighter. For the first time, Boaz saw the skin of her hand redden faintly, the veins darkening like cracks spreading through marble.

“Your kin,” Kiera said quietly. “If they saw you now…”

“They did,” Duln interrupted. Her voice had no heat, only finality. “Now they don’t.”

Lyra frowned. “Meaning?”

“Meaning they looked, and turned away. No kin for traitor.”

Theo shifted uncomfortably. “You left to find us?”

“I left to breathe air that is killing me,” she said. “I left to hear what the stone whispers of the leaf.”

Aldryn leaned forward. “The Terran leaf of the Sigil?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s real.”

“Always real,” she said. “Buried deep. Guarded by those who still believe the curse keeps them pure.”

Boaz felt the faint pulse of the Sigil again, a warmth spreading beneath his ribs. “And you think I can…”

“Break it?” She laughed again, the sound sharp as shattering slate. “You already did, fire-bearer. You break it every breath. The curse weakens where you walk.”

The company stared at him. He shook his head. “That’s not… I didn’t mean…”

Duln’s gaze was steady. “Intention doesn’t matter. Sigil remembers purpose, not guilt. You carry what it wants.”

Aldryn’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve seen its power before.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Once, long ago. When the three leaves were still one. I was young girl.” She fell silent for a moment, eyes unfocused, as if seeing far through the trees.

“When the war ended,” she murmured, “ground split. Fire under mountain, flood through river, wind screaming from the peaks. We thought we saved world. But all we saved was breaking. Never healed.”

Her voice trembled, just slightly, and Boaz realized it wasn’t from emotion, but from weakness. Her hand shook when she reached for her waterskin.

Kiera moved to steady her, but Duln waved her off. “No pity. Still strong enough to walk.”

Boaz hesitated. “How long?”

She seemed to understand what he meant. “Three days. Maybe four. Stone calls louder now.”

Aldryn’s tone grew grave. “If you go back underground…”

She shook her head. “No. I walked out. I don’t go back. I finish this above or not at all.”

Lyra’s voice softened. “That sounds like dying.”

Duln met her eyes. “It is.” The admission landed like a dropped hammer: simple, inarguable.

For a long time no one spoke. The firelight dwindled to a glow. Overhead, the forest deepened into night, the pale trunks ghostlike in the dark. Boaz rose and stood near the edge of the ravine, looking east through the trees. “Let’s make those days matter.”

Duln studied him for a moment, unreadable, and gave a slow nod. “Good,” she said quietly. “Stone may yet forgive.”

Night settled like breath drawn deep.

The small fire hissed softly, casting a circle of gold around the company. Beyond it, the forest was ink and silver. The pale trunks stood sentinel, their bark catching glints of starlight.

Duln sat apart, near the edge of the glow, her hood drawn low. She had not spoken since her last words. Every so often her head dipped slightly, as though listening to something distant beneath the ground.

Theo poked the fire with a stick. “So,” he said, “how old do you think she is?”

Lyra arched a brow. “That’s a dangerous question, even for a Huma woman.”

Theo grinned. “I’m serious. She remembers the breaking of the Sigil. That was, what…”

“Over a hundred years,” Aldryn said quietly.

Jaxson whistled under his breath. “She doesn’t look that old.”

“She doesn’t look alive,” Lyra muttered.

Boaz glanced toward Duln. Her profile was carved sharp by the firelight, lines like etchings in stone, ageless more than old. “Maybe she’s both,” he said softly.

Kiera stirred the ashes gently with a branch. “A hundred years…” she said. “That means she was there. When it happened. When they took their leaves.”

Aldryn nodded. “She would’ve grown up beneath the echo of it, among those who still believed they’d done right by sealing themselves under.”

Theo looked toward Duln again, his expression softening. “And now she’s out here dying for it.”

No one replied.

For a while, only the fire spoke in low crackles and shifting coals. Somewhere in the dark, Eira’s soft wings stirred the air as she shifted her perch.

Lyra said, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I reach a hundred and can still scare a squad of armored men into silence, I’ll count that a victory.”

Theo chuckled. “I’ll drink to that.”

Kiera smiled faintly. “You’ll be lucky to make forty with your diet.”

“Forty-five,” Theo corrected.

Jaxson snorted. “He’s counting borrowed time from when he doesn’t shut up.”

Even Aldryn allowed himself a small laugh. “If mirth keeps you breathing, Theo, may your tongue never tire.”

“Thank you, old man. I intend to out-talk death.”

“Death,” Lyra said, “will likely surrender first.”

Their laughter was quiet but real, threading through the night like a small mercy. Even Duln’s head tilted slightly at the sound, though she did not join it.

When the laughter faded, Boaz gazed past the firelight. The Sigil lay warm against his chest, steady as a heartbeat.

He thought of the Agua freed from their curse, of Duln’s fading strength, of the three leaves scattered and waiting. Somewhere in the dark beneath their feet, the Terran halls slept, bound by their own vow. He wondered how many others like her still lived, old as the breaking, carrying pieces of a story too heavy for memory. And he wondered, not for the first time, whether the Sigil’s binding power would heal the world… or undo what little held it. Thorne shifted beside him, pressing close. Boaz reached down, fingers buried in the lynx’s thick fur. The familiar rumbled softly, eyes half-closed, a grounding warmth.

“Sleep,” Kiera said gently, settling her cloak around her shoulders. “Tomorrow will come soon enough.”

Boaz nodded, though he stayed awake a while longer. Across the fire, Duln’s head had bowed, her breathing shallow but even.

For the first time, she looked almost peaceful.

Above them, the wind moved through the pale trees: slow, deep, and even, like the breath of a vast creature that had not yet decided whether to wake.

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