The climb from the Traveler’s Rest was steady but unforgiving. Each step carried them higher into the Pallor Hills, where the grass grew thin and the stone pressed closer to the surface. The mist that had pooled in the valleys drifted after them, lifted up as if by unseen hands, until their world felt narrowed down to their breathing and footfalls.

By midmorning, the air freshened with cold. The wind had a bite to it, sharp enough to find every gap in their cloaks. It hissed through the ridges, carrying the damp smell of last night’s storm: wet lichen, charred grass, and stone still cooling from lightning strikes.

They topped the rise together and saw it.

A single stone spire jutted up from the slope ahead, leaning ever so slightly toward the east. The base was buried halfway in crumbling shale, the upper half scarred by years of wind and rain. Faded carvings spiraled around it, most so worn they were little more than grooves. But here and there, faint blue light traced the edges of a rune like someone had taken a glowing thread and laid it into the cracks.

“Is it just me,” Theo said, “or does that thing look like a warning against going anywhere near it?”

“It’s Terran work,” Aldryn said, stepping closer. “Very old Terran work. Older than most trees in these hills.” He leaned on his staff, peering up at the carvings. “These were boundary markers once.”

“Boundaries for what?” Boaz asked.

Aldryn’s mouth twitched. “For telling their neighbors, ‘This far, and no farther, unless you want to see what lives under your boots.’”

That got Kiera’s attention. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Aldryn said, “the Terrans built these where the ground gets … tricky. Caverns, sinkholes, places where the rock isn’t as solid as it pretends to be.”

Theo squinted up at it. “So basically: ‘Welcome, please fall into our bottomless pits.’ Friendly.”

Shaye had circled around to the downhill side, where the shale thinned to moss. She crouched low, fingertips brushing the damp ground. “Tracks,” she said. “Wolf, maybe. Heavy ones. And dragging something.”

Telen joined her, scanning the slope. “Claws. Not worn smooth like normal. Almost … brittle.”

Theo hopped down from a rock, brushing dirt off his hands. “Found some of the writing you can actually read.” He pointed to a band of runes higher up on the spire. “This says something like, ‘Hold fast at the watch until the horn speaks.’ That part’s clear enough. But then it goes on about ‘thin ground’ and ‘breath doors.’ No idea what that means.”

“Breath doors?” Lyra asked. “That’s unsettling.”

“They had a talent for unsettling,” Aldryn said, his voice dry as dust. “My guess? Passages that open and close depending on the air currents down below. And the ‘thin ground’ is exactly what it sounds like. Fall through, and you won’t stop for a while.”

“So they marked them for themselves?” Boaz asked.

“Partly, yes. So their own patrols could get around without losing half their numbers,” Aldryn said. “And to scare off everyone else.”

“Effective,” Jaxson muttered.

Thorne walked to the edge of the group, tail flicking, ears swiveling like radar. Boaz noticed the way his steps were quieter than usual, more deliberate. The lynx didn’t spook easily, but he didn’t like this place.

Eira glided overhead, casting a brief shadow across the group before banking toward the east. Kestel kept low to the ground, hopping from rock to rock, turning toward every sound, with his head cocking sideways. Mika sniffed the air and let out a short, questioning whine.

Theo leaned an elbow on the spire. “I’m tempted to knock and see if a Terran pops out.”

Aldryn didn’t look up from the runes. “Go ahead. If something drags you underground screaming, the rest of us will at least know the marker still works.”

Theo opened his mouth, then shut it. “You know, I’m suddenly less curious.”

They lingered a little bit longer. The hills rolled out in every direction: scrubby grass, twisted pines clinging to the higher ridges, gullies that swallowed the wind, then sending it back as a low, uneven howl. Boaz caught the faint flash of lightning far to the south, too far for the thunder to reach them.

“Alright,” Jaxson said, “are we moving on or are we setting up camp with our new rock friend?”

“Move on,” Aldryn said. “Best not to linger where the ground can hear you.”

That got a raised brow from Kiera. “Hear us?”

Aldryn started down the slope. “I said the ground remembers footsteps. Not all memories are friendly.”

Theo muttered to Tink, “Pretty sure we don’t want the ground hearing us.” Tink squeaked back, clearly in agreement.

Shaye stayed behind long enough to glance once more at the runes before following. Telen came last, eyes never leaving the slope behind them.

They hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when Thorne stopped dead, his whole body stiff. Boaz felt it, the tension running through the lynx’s muscles, the way his ears flattened and his whiskers flared forward.

“What is it?” Boaz murmured.

Thorne’s head turned toward the rocks below the ridge. He didn’t growl, but the sound that came out was low and rumbling, a warning without teeth … yet.

Kestel hissed and launched into the air, circling low over the group. Her wings beat hard against the wind.

A moment later, Boaz heard it too: a growl. Rough, wet, like a throat full of gravel. Another answered it, closer. Then another.

“Positions,” Boaz said.

The slope below them shifted, loose shale sliding down like something big had pushed through it. The company tightened their formation without needing to be told.

The first wolf came from behind a crag: or what had once been a wolf. Its fur was patchy, matted with thick black growth that crawled across its skin like veins. Its eyes glowed red, and with every breath, spores drifted from its mouth, carried on the wind.

Three more followed, jumping down from the rocks in low, hungry bounds.

“Guess we found what those tracks belonged to,” Jaxson said, drawing both short swords.

Theo grimaced. “They look like they were buried in compost and decided to live with it.”

“Focus,” Aldryn said, planting his staff.

The ground here was already treacherous: loose stone that shifted underfoot, patches of mud from the storm still slick and waiting. The wolves came fast, bounding from rock to rock, jaws snapping.

And then they were on them.

The first one lunged for Kiera.

Eira shrieked from above, and Kiera spun sideways, mace swinging in a short, brutal arc. The blow caught the wolf’s skull and sent it tumbling back into the shale. Black-veined fungus tore loose in clumps, scattering spores in a dusty cloud that was carried on the breeze.

“Don’t breathe it!” Aldryn barked.

Another came at Jaxson from his blind side, but he was already moving. Perivigilum flared behind his eyes, that strange awareness that always seemed to get there before his thoughts. He blur-dashed sideways, tackling Lyra out of the way just as teeth snapped shut where her arm had been.

“Felt it before I saw it,” he muttered, rolling to his feet. His swords flashed in both hands, silver arcs in the gray light.

Theo, braced awkwardly on a patch of loose rock, slammed a hand into the ground. A large chunk of shale and moss jerked upright, the rune lines on his glove pulsing as he quickly crafted it into the shape he wanted. The makeshift golem lumbered forward unsteadily, but it was enough. It body-slammed a wolf mid-leap and sent them both crashing into a boulder.

Boaz called for the Sigil’s shield, willing the light into being between the company and the wolves. It came, much too fast, flaring in a white-hot burst that seared the air and scorched his palm. The shield winked out as fast as it had appeared. Boaz hissed, clutching the burn.

“Not what I meant to do,” he gritted.

“That’s what happens when you grab too much rope,” Aldryn shot back, staff cracking into the ribs of a wolf that had gotten too close. “Sometimes it pulls you instead.”

Telen met a charging wolf head-on, driving his spear through its chest with a single clean thrust. Shaye moved opposite him, low and quick, hooking another wolf’s hind leg with her curved short sword before planting a boot in its ribs and kicking it into a narrow ravine. It yelped all the way down until the sound cut off hard.

Eira called out from above, one sharp hoot, then two more, which Kiera instinctively knew, through her bond with the owl, meant trouble from the side. “Left flank!” Kiera shouted, already turning.

Lyra flicked her wrist, and an illusion of herself shimmered into being several paces away. The incoming wolf took the bait, pouncing straight through the image and landing in front of Jaxson’s waiting blades.

The fight was quick, ugly, and in close quarters. By the time the last wolf went down under Boaz’s blade, the wind was carrying the stink of rotting flesh and wet fungus. The company stood in a loose, ragged circle, catching their breath, but also trying not to breathe in the stench.

Telen toed one of the bodies over. The flesh was sagging and soft, rotting from the inside, but the bones beneath had a strange petrified sheen, like stone that once was bone.

“These are definitely not normal wolves,” Lyra said, brushing a clump of fungus off her sleeve.

“No,” Aldryn agreed, crouching beside a carcass. He pried its jaws open with the butt of his staff and scraped away some of the black growth with it. It came away in strands, like wet roots. “It’s… refining itself.”

“You’re saying the fungus learns?” Kiera asked.

“I’m saying whatever causes it… adapts,” Aldryn replied. His tone was calm, but his eyes stayed on the carcass too long.

Boaz flexed his burned hand, the skin already blistering. “The Sigil shield … I don’t know what I did wrong.”

Aldryn straightened. “Nothing. You’re carrying something powerful that was never meant to be simple, or easy to use. And everything that matters comes with a cost. That, and no one’s ever used it like this, I’m sure.”

Theo looked like he was about to say something philosophical, but Tink popped out of his collar, sniffed at one of the dead wolves, and sneezed violently. Theo wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, that’s about my opinion too.”

Aldryn didn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

They left the wolves where they had fallen, grim shapes against the grass. No one suggested doing anything with them. No one wanted to touch them. The memory of snapping jaws and blood-dark fur was enough to sour the air. Jaxson spat over his shoulder as they walked. “Best leave them to the crows.”

Theo, lugging his staff, tried for levity but couldn’t quite mask the tremor in his voice. “Crows, or whatever else finds that kind of wolf meat a delicacy. Personally, I’ll pass.”

The company pressed on until the bodies lay well behind them. By the time they found a shallow cut between two ridges, the sun had dipped low, turning the clouds over the Pallor Hills a bruised purple. The wind had shifted too, carrying the metallic tang of distant rain. They built a small fire there, careful to keep it low and fed with dry scrub rather than green wood.

Boaz sat on a flat rock, palm out. The burn was an angry red spiral across the palm of his hand, blistered in two places.

Kiera knelt beside him, her pack open. “You should have said something sooner,” she murmured, pulling out a narrow clay jar. She popped the lid and dipped two fingers into a cool salve that smelled faintly of mint and river clay.

“It didn’t seem too bad at first, then it blistered,” Boaz said, but he didn’t pull away.

“It’s your sword hand,” Kiera countered, working the ointment gently over the burn. “Having this on your hand is not an option. This salve should heal it fairly quickly.”

He let out a breath, the sting fading under her touch. “Still not the shield I meant to call.”

“Maybe it was the one you needed,” she said simply, wrapping the hand in a strip of linen before standing.

On the other side of the fire, Shaye sat with her knees drawn up, running a whetstone down the edge of her knife. “You want a real fight,” she said without looking up, “try hunting marsh wolves in the dry season. My uncle took me once. Said they’d be sluggish without water. He lied.”

Lyra leaned in. “And?”

Shaye’s eyes glinted in the firelight. “We found three. Or, they found us first. I spent half the day up a tree while my uncle tried to shout them off. He finally tied his shirt to a spear and tossed it, to put them off our scent. They chased it far enough so we could slip away. We went home and told my aunt we’d gone swimming.”

Theo choked on a laugh. “That’s the worst hunting plan I’ve ever heard.”

Shaye shrugged. “We came back alive. Best kind of plan.”

Lyra actually laughed: a quick, bright sound that carried over the crackle of the fire. Tink, who had been circling like a furry comet, took advantage of the distraction to slip a paw into Theo’s satchel and come up with half a loaf of bread.

“Oi! Thief!” Theo lunged, but Tink darted behind Telen, gnawing triumphantly.

Telen didn’t move except to glance down at her. “Fast hands,” he said.

The easy conversation and the flicker of the fire softened the edges of the day’s fight, but the wolves’ red eyes still lingered in the back of Boaz’s mind. It was not easy to let go of that afterimage.

The fire popped and hissed as fat raindrops from the last passing squall slid from the leaves above. The air smelled of wet earth and char, with a faint bitter edge that no one cared to name.

Shaye sat cross-legged with a strip of leather in her hands, stropping the edge of her spearhead with steady pulls. “Marsh wolves aren’t much different than these,” she said into the quiet. “Only smaller, meaner, and twice as desperate. One followed me for half a mile once.”

Theo cocked his head. “How’d you shake it?”

Shaye smirked without looking up. “I stopped running, turned around and glared. Thing figured out quick there were easier meals than me.”

Kiera burst out laughing, sudden and sharp. “Only you would stare down a starving wolf and win.”

Tink gave a squeaky chirrup as if seconding the joke, and even Jaxson’s mouth twitched at the corners.

Boaz sat near the edge of the firelight, rolling the Sigil between his fingers and watching the way it caught the flame. He wasn’t brooding exactly, but him being quiet was its own kind of weight.

With a sudden flick of his wrist, Telen sent a small, dark object spinning through the air toward Theo. Theo caught it, barely, and blinked down at what looked like a rough carving of a wolf’s head, shaped from a shard of stone.

“Second to fall,” Telen said simply.

Theo turned it over in his hands, frowning in mock offense. “Second? I’ll have you know my rock golem took that one down before you even …”

“You animated a rock to crush it,” Jaxson cut in. “Not the same thing.”

“It was tactically brilliant,” Theo shot back, holding the carving like a trophy. “And heavy. You try throwing a boulder sometime.”

Aldryn, who had been quietly stoking the fire with a long stick, didn’t even look up as he muttered, “Some of us have been throwing boulders since before your grandfather was born.”

That drew a grin from Jaxson, who shook his head. “Pretty sure he’s not joking.”

Boaz leaned back, letting the warmth seep into his shoulders. Around them, the hills were quiet again, but the memory of glowing eyes in the dark lingered. A part of him wanted to believe it was over, that the wolves had been the worst the Pallor Hills had to offer. Another part, the part that felt the faint thrum of the Sigil against his palm, knew better.

Far above, lightning flared deep inside the stormbank rolling toward the horizon. It was still a long way off, but the thunder that followed seemed to arrive too quickly, as if it had misjudged the distance.

They ate what Theo swore was stew and what everyone else agreed was “hot, but not terrible,” which was victory enough. When the last bowl was scraped clean, Jaxson doused the fire down to a low, steady glow. The light shone on rock and faces, but quickly fell short outside in the dark beyond their little camp.

“Set up watches,” Aldryn said, pushing a stick into the coals until the end smoked. “Short shifts. We leave at first light if the weather cooperates.”

“The weather hasn’t cooperated since we left Cirol,” Theo said.

“Then maybe it’ll develop a conscience,” Aldryn replied. Dry. “Stranger things have happened. Maybe.”

They arranged without fuss. Jaxson took first watch with Shaye; Telen would swap in, then Kiera, then Boaz to close the night. Lyra, already sinking into her blanket with Mika curled against her knees, offered to trade anyone who wanted it. No one did. “I’ll take first watch tomorrow night then.”

Kestel lifted off and settled on a stunted pine just beyond the ridge, her silhouette a small wedge against the dim sky. Eira chose a higher perch on a piece of shale shaped like a fin, her eyes half-lidded, the turn of her head slow and precise. Thorne circled once around the hollow, nose low, then came to rest a few paces from Boaz with the patience of an animal that had slept outdoors its whole life.

Jaxson and Shaye slipped to the edge where shadow met stone. They didn’t talk much. When they did, it was in quick, practical bursts: what lines a wolf might run, which gullies channeled wind, where the shale gave under a careless foot. The kind of talk that saved lives or gave insight.

Theo lay on his back and used Tink as a pillow until she slapped his cheek with a small black hand and claimed the “pillow” rights for herself. “Fine,” he whispered, folding his cloak under her so it became more like a proper pillow. “But I expect you to make me tea in the morning.” Tink chittered in a way that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Lyra pulled a thin black stone from her coat and turned it in her hands, the surface catching just enough light to show shallow scratches. She hadn’t been carving or drawing on it, just rounding the edges with another small stone, as if her fingers needed a task her mind wasn’t ready to name. Mika’s breathing slowed, a steady light snore.

Boaz tried to sleep early and failed at it. The burn in his palm had cooled and begun to heal under Kiera’s salve, but the memory of that flash, how the shield leapt up too fast, too bright, kept replaying. He kept seeing the moment before it came. Or, more honestly, he kept seeing the moment after, where it hadn’t held at all.

“You’re making that look again,” Kiera said quietly, rolling onto an elbow beside him.

“What look?”

“The one where you try to stare at a problem to make it smaller.”

Boaz huffed. “How’s it working?”

“Terribly,” she said, then softened it with a half-smile. “You’ll figure it out, I’m sure. Just … don’t practice with your hand between the flame and the object next time.”

“I didn’t exactly plan it.” He flexed his fingers inside the wrap. “I called a shield and got…”

“Proof,” Aldryn said from the far side of the fire. Boaz hadn’t noticed him awake. The old mage could sleep like a stone or only look like he was sleeping like a stone when he chose. “Proof that it listens. Proof that it will answer if you get your question right.”

“Not comforting,” Boaz said.

“Not meant to be,” Aldryn replied, and turned over, done for now.

Kiera settled back. “Try to sleep. I’ll wake you for last watch.”

He closed his eyes and stubbornly kept them closed. The wind raised a low, steady hum in the rocks above them, not the high keen of earlier but something closer to the sound of breathing. He told himself it was the slope cooling and the night settling into its joints. He told himself that twice. On the third try, he drifted.

He woke to a rasp and a quiet curse: Jaxson swapping places with Telen and kicking a pebble that clattered farther than seemed possible. “Sorry,” Jaxson whispered into the dark. Telen’s answer was a patient exhale that somehow said you are forgiven and please never do that again without language.

The second watch passed in a hush. Telen stood like part of the ridge, spear angled, eyes half-lidded. Kestel lifted once and dropped again; Eira did not move. Shaye slept with one hand on her curved blade. Lyra’s stone vanished back into her coat. Theo snored until Tink shoved a paw into his mouth; then he snored around the paw, which was somehow worse.

Kiera woke Boaz with a squeeze to his shoulder. “Your turn,” she murmured. “Storm’s headed east. Might miss us if it keeps going.”

“Nothing’s missed us lately,” he mumbled sleepily, sitting up.

They swapped places. Kiera wrapped her cloak tighter and slid into the space beside Lyra, sleep catching her quickly. Boaz stood a moment on the edge of the hollow, stretching out the soreness, and letting his eyes adjust. The hills were ink and charcoal. A low rim of cloud scudded along the far horizon, occasionally pulsing with distant lightning.

Thorne rose and stretched, then sat exactly where Boaz’s shadow fell and watched the same dark. The lynx’s ears twitched at small sounds: pebbles settling, grass hissing under a thin breeze, the creak of drying wood.

Boaz walked the perimeter in slow passes, counting steps because counting helped. He checked the same rocks three times because familiarity also helped. On the fourth pass, he paused to listen. He didn’t know what he listened for, only that sometimes the land made a sound that wasn’t land-like, and he wanted to hear it first.

“You’re awake like a guilty man,” Aldryn said softly behind him.

Boaz didn’t jump, but only because he’d decided long ago that Aldryn enjoyed making people jump and he refused to feed that particular habit. “I’m awake like a man on watch.”

“Mmm.” Aldryn’s gaze flicked to the bandage peeking from Boaz’s fist. “You grasped for a door and found a wall. Next time, knock first.”

“How?”

“Ask simpler questions,” Aldryn said. “Often, and in order. Build on them.”

“That makes no sense. That’s not how shields work.”

“It’s how people work,” Aldryn said. “And the Sigil is attached to one.” He started back toward the fire, then paused. “You are not alone with this, Boaz. Don’t try to be.”

The words should have helped. They didn’t, exactly, but they settled somewhere useful.

Aldryn lay down again. The fire shifted. The night kept being night.

Boaz was almost ready to sit when he heard Kiera humming. Apparently she wasn’t asleep yet.

It came from the far side of the fire, a simple, low tune with no pretension to it. Not a song he knew, just something old enough that the words had been forgotten. The notes sat soft in the air, like warm breath fogging cool glass. Lyra rolled onto her back and let out an answering note under it, barely there, more an agreement than harmony. It lasted all of twenty seconds and then slipped away as if the night had asked for quiet again and they’d obliged.

Boaz didn’t call across to thank her. He thought of it and didn’t. The sound had been for the dark, not for him.

The last of the wind was fitful gusts coming from odd directions, like it was blowing through crooked outcroppings. Kestel woke and alighted to a new perch without complaint. Eira rotated on her stone and settled, eyes eagerly watching nothing or everything. Somewhere far off, something big, maybe a deer, moved through scrub with a cautious, steady rhythm. Nothing hunted it yet.

Boaz finished a fifth pass and decided a sixth would be excessive even by his nervous standards. He sat with his back to the ridge and watched the fire go from orange to deeper orange to a dull, living red. The bandage on his palm itched. He left it alone. It meant it was healing.

Thorne shifted closer until his shoulder pressed lightly to Boaz’s shin. The cat’s eyes reflected the dim fire as two thin coins. Thorne didn’t blink often. When he did, though, it was usually slow and deliberate, much like other cats might. Boaz was still learning his language, but understood that his actions now meant “I’m here,” and “with you,” and “watching.”

“Good,” Boaz said, barely making a sound. “Me too.”

He almost missed it. Something small floated up from the shadow at the edge of the hollow. Not ash, not a moth. A flake of something pale, lifting on a current that didn’t feel like wind. It turned over once as it rose, and with the red glow of the fire’s coals behind it, split into several smaller pieces, like what sometimes happens when you step on a mushroom, dispersing.

Boaz leaned forward, a breath caught halfway between his chest and his mouth. The spores drifted higher, a lazy spiral, then slipped sideways and vanished into the dark above their heads. Thorne’s ears tracked it, then flattened for a heartbeat. His tail thumped once against Boaz’s boot.

Boaz looked to the slope, to the seams where shale met soil, to the places a spore could have grown. He saw nothing. He told himself it could have ridden in on their clothes, their boots, their gear. He told himself that twice.

He didn’t wake the others. There was no need … it was just a spore.

Instead, he watched the dark a while longer, until the coals nearly died and the sky began to think about being light. When at last he stooped to feed the fire a small armful of twigs, the glow of the fire came back quick and eager, like a name just remembered.

Behind him, someone turned in their blanket and Kiera’s low humming returned for a breath, half-remembered, then faded. Aldryn snored once and stopped. Jaxson muttered something about “left flank” and settled. Lyra pulled her hood over her eyes. Theo began to dream-laugh. Tink shushed him with a paw to the mouth and went back to sleep.

Thorne didn’t close his eyes at all. He watched Boaz. Then the ridge. Then Boaz again. Out beyond the little bowl of light, the Pallor Hills soaked in the last of the storm and waited for whatever came next. The spire on the ridge stood as a silhouette against the paling sky, its runes dead to human eyes at this distance.

In the shadow under the ridge, another spore flake lifted and drifted away, silent, faintly glowing, and unseen.

The fire had burned low, a red seam across the ash. Everyone else slept, wrapped in cloaks, their breath steady in the hush. Even Tink’s little chirrs had gone quiet, as if the raccoon had finally given in to weariness. Eira was still awake, sitting now on a tree limb, head slowly swiveling, eyes half closed but piercing, scouting the watches of the night with Boaz. This was her time of the night, and she was awake and alert.

Boaz sat with his back to a boulder, the Sigil’s weight pressing under his tunic. Every so often he thought he felt it stir, like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. His hand strayed to it once, then withdrew. He didn’t want to wake whatever it was dreaming of … as if it really dreamed, he thought.

The wind shifted, carrying the smell of wet stone and something faintly metallic. Boaz glanced toward the ridge again. For an instant, he thought the spire’s face gleamed, not with moonlight, but with something colder. He blinked, and it was only a shadow. A passing cloud obscuring part of the moon, maybe.

Thorne’s ears flicked. The lynx rose slightly, muscles taut, then settled again, eyes never leaving the dark. A low growl vibrated in his chest, softer than the wind, meant only for Boaz.

“I see it too,” Boaz whispered, though he didn’t know what “it” was. His voice felt swallowed by the mist.

He forced himself to breathe slowly. One hand rested on the hilt of his father’s blade, though he knew steel would mean little against what haunted ruins. He kept watch until the eastern sky grew pale, the first rim of gray brushing the horizon.

Dawn was near. The others would rise soon, and they would move on. But as Boaz stared at the ridge, he could not shake the sense that the spire had been staring back.

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