Dawn didn’t do much for the cold. The storm had moved on, but the hills kept its memory: slick shale, water threading down in silver seams, grass beaten flat and shining. The Windward Road climbed in two pale ruts, the strip of sod between them bruised by hooves and cart wheels that had passed on better days.

They walked with their cloaks tight. Mist lay in the hollows and drifted up the slopes in slow folds. It was the kind that muffled sound and made distances feel farther than they were. Boaz almost felt the cool dampness in his bones. Thorne moved a little ahead of him, tail low, whiskers beaded with droplets. Every so often the lynx stopped and tested the air, then moved on without a sound.

They topped a small rise and the land opened for the first time in an hour. Cutting through a damp meadow, the road then bent toward a crossroads where an old pillar leaned in the grass. At some point, the pillar’s top had broken off, and lay half-buried a few strides away, worn smooth by years of weather. Someone had chipped shallow arrows into the stone at waist height; whatever it was the arrows pointed to was long gone.

Beyond the pillar, a wagon lay on its side in the ditch. They slowed without speaking. The wagon’s wheel was turned a fraction of a turn, as if trying to right itself. The spoke that should have snapped had not snapped at all; it had become stone along with everything else: hub, rim, iron bands, the nails themselves. The canvas was stone too, frozen in a mid-flap that still looked like wind trying to get a hand under it. Jars had spilled from the bed and rolled a pace or two; they lay on their sides, petrified mid-roll, with the suggestion of liquid holed up behind stony mouths. A rope hung slack from the tailboard, its fibers carved into perfect gray threads as fine as hair.

No birds perched on the wagon. No insects crawled on it. Even the mist seemed to give it room like a thing that should be avoided. Theo got there first because that was who he was. He crouched by the rear wheel and ran his palm along the gray curve. “Not fungal,” he said, almost to himself. “No smell, no tack. Feel this, smooth as worked stone but you can still make out the grain.” He traced a fingertip over the wheel’s face where rings would have been if it were wood. “Too clean,” he went on.

Kiera’s hand hovered, then settled lightly on the stony plank where a driver would sit. Her eyes unfocused. She drew a breath that didn’t feel like the air around them. “A woman,” she whispered. “Hands rough from working in the fields. A child tucked against her side under a blanket. The wheel hits a stone. The wagon lurches.” Kiera’s brow knotted. “She turns her shoulder to shield the child. The child screams.” Her voice thinned. “She cries too, but quieter.” Kiera’s hand jerked as if from heat and she backed away, blinking hard. “Then… nothing.”

The quiet pressed deeper.

Lyra stood with her hands in her pockets and looked like she wanted to put them somewhere more useful. “So it’s not just stone,” she said, voice low. “It’s… the last second. Kept.”

“Echo-stone,” Aldryn said. He had come up on her shoulder without Boaz noticing. He planted the end of his staff in the wet ground and leaned a little, considering the wagon like a chest he wasn’t sure he wanted opened. “Thought it had been lost since the Sundering.” He addressed the wagon the way he might a dangerous animal. “Magic that holds a final moment to the world and hardens everything it touches into stone. Turns terror into sculpture.”

Theo withdrew his hand as if remembering it belonged to him. “Why would anyone do this?”

“To warn,” Aldryn said, dry. “To mark a debt. To remember what should have ended but did not.” His gaze moved to the broken pillar at the crossroads, then back. “There were rules once about using it. There were supposed to be rules about a lot of things.”

Shaye crouched near the ditch and scraped a finger through the mud where it cupped against the wagon’s side. “No prints,” she said. “No recent ones, anyway.”

“Echo-stone doesn’t weather like normal rock,” Aldryn said. “Could’ve happened yesterday and it would look the same ten years from now.”

Telen had gone to the far side of the wagon. He touched the stone rope with two fingers, then drew his hand away and wiped it on his cloak. “Feels like a gravestone.”

Kestel circled once over the crossroads, making a brief wedge against the mist before settling on the pillar’s broken top. Eira lifted silently from Kiera’s shoulder, landing on the top of a nearby bush and watching with a tilt of her head. Mika sniffed the air, made a soft, uncertain sound, and pressed closer to Lyra’s knee.

Boaz didn’t touch the wagon. He stood near the petrified jars and looked at the way one had knocked a small stone out of place. Even the knocked stone had turned: half soil, half gray, as if the magic had decided the ground it struck had become part of the moment too. He rested his hand on his chest where the Sigil lay under his shirt. It answered him once, a slow, measured pulse. Not alarm. Attention. He looked to Aldryn. “This happens by itself?”

“No,” Aldryn said. “Not by itself.” He followed the line of the road with his eyes, then the ridge above it where the mist hung thicker. “Someone woke it.” He paused, then added, “Something is stirring these ruins.”

Theo went quiet in a way Boaz didn’t often see. He pulled a little notebook from inside his coat and scrawled a quick drawing of the wheel, the rope, the way the tarp made an arc over the bed. “There’s a mark on the canvas,” he said, peering close. “Here. Small, like a maker’s stamp.” He angled his head, squinting. “No, not a stamp. Maybe an unfinished rune. The rest is … missing, or I’m dumb.”

“Let’s not make me choose,” Aldryn said, deadpan.

Theo made a face. “You’re getting funnier.”

“I’m getting older,” Aldryn said. “It has a similar effect.”

Kiera had moved away from the seat and stood with her arms folded tight against her ribs. She didn’t look at the wagon again. “This place hurts,” she said simply. “Like the air is bruised.”

Jaxson’s mouth had drawn into a line. He eyed the meadow, the slope, the gullies. “If whoever did this is still nearby, they’ve had a good long time to get the measure of us,” he said. “We should go.”

“Agreed,” Shaye said.

Lyra looked from the wagon to the pillar to the broken top stone where Kestel stood. “What did this road used to be?” she asked, more to Aldryn than anyone.

“A promise,” Aldryn said. He didn’t soften it. “Wardens walked it. Beacons lit when they passed. If you were a farmer, you slept easier the night after they came by. That was a long time ago.”

Theo lifted his pencil. “And now?”

“Now it’s ours for the day,” Aldryn said. “Let’s not make it ours this night.”

They gave the wagon a wide berth when they moved on, not out of superstition, but because some things deserve space. Thorne went last, pausing a moment with his head turned toward the stone seat where Kiera’s hand had rested. His ears flattened once; then he followed, close at Boaz’s heel.

As they started back toward the road, a sound split the mist: sharp, brittle, like pottery shattering.

Boaz turned. A jagged crack had opened along the wagon’s bed, running through stone canvas and wheel alike. Shards sloughed away, clattering into the ditch, but they didn’t fall still. They crawled together, scraping, grinding, until they stood upright in the rough outline of a figure.

The thing screamed.

It wasn’t so much a human voice but the echo of the woman and child Kiera had felt: terror bound into stone. The sound hit like a fist in the chest, freezing Boaz in place.

“Down!” Jaxson shouted, shoving Lyra aside as the wight lurched forward. Its arms were nothing more than broken beams and jagged rope turned into rock, but the weight behind them could crush bone as easily as grass.

Kiera had her mace in hand before she thought about it. She swung low, smashing a chunk from the creature’s leg. The shards scattered but slithered back, re-forming even as she struck again.

Lyra flung an orb of light across the wight’s eyes, its head jerking side to side as though confused by phantom attackers. Jaxson slipped behind it, driving an arrow into the split where its shoulder should be. The arrow shattered against stone.

Theo stooped to the ground and scrawled the half-rune he’d seen on the wagon into the dirt and shouted the syllable he thought matched. The mark flared weakly, and for a breath the wight slowed, its scream choking into a rumble.

“Hold it!” Theo cried, voice breaking. “I can’t …”

The rune fizzled. The wight lurched free.

Thorne threw himself against its side, claws raking stone. The creature staggered, and in that gap Boaz felt the Sigil ignite beneath his ribs. Heat surged into his burned palm, pain and light together.

He thrust his hand forward. The Sigil’s glow spilled out, brighter than the weak dawn, and the wight convulsed as if its own echo had been thrown back at it. Cracks raced across its body. The scream it made was quieter now, breaking apart, less a terror than a memory crumbling.

Then it collapsed into rubble. Shards of stone rolled into the ditch and lay still at last. The wagon seemed dimmer than before, as though part of it had been drained and had lost its brightness.

Nobody spoke for a long time. Only the sound of their breathing filled the crossroads.

Aldryn was the first to move, his staff planting with deliberate weight. “Echo-stone shouldn’t wake,” he said. “Not on its own.” He looked at Boaz, the lines of his face more drawn than usual. “Something called it. Or something answered.”

Boaz clenched his palm, the skin still tingling from the Sigil’s fire. He didn’t answer. The mist pressed closer around them. Far up on the ridge, where the road bent east, a shadow moved: tall, thin, watching.

Thorne growled low in his throat.

No one suggested staying.

They backed away from the wagon until the mist half-swallowed it again, then turned for the road. Boaz flexed his fingers once; the skin of his palm still tingled from the Sigil’s flash. Thorne kept to his knee, big head brushing Boaz’s thigh as if to herd him along.

They moved in a staggered line: Jaxson and Shaye out front, light on their feet; Telen a half-step to the rear where he could turn either way; the rest close enough to touch. Kestel lifted and took a shallow angle along the ridge. Eira glided farther out, a pale shape under the low sky. The mist drifted in waves that clung to the ground and rose again as they moved through it, never quite deciding what it wanted.

“Whoever made that echo stone could still be near,” Aldryn said. “If they’re smart, they’ll want to see who answered it.”

“All the more reason to leave this place,” Lyra muttered, rubbing at her forearm where the wight’s stone had grazed her skin. Mika pressed close, ears flicking at every hiss of grass.

They topped a gentle rise. Jaxson stopped and pointed with two fingers, not bothering to speak. Across the shallow vale, up on the ridge the road would angle toward, a figure stood in the mist: tall, thin, cloak edges raveling in the wind. For a breath it looked like it might lift a hand.

Boaz took a step forward. “Hoi!” he called, not shouting, just enough to carry. The figure turned, or the mist turned around it. Then it came apart, like smoke being exhaled and blown away.

Thorne’s ears flattened. A low growl rolled in his chest and died there.

“Not illusion,” Telen said, barely voicing it.

“Watching us,” Shaye added. “Or leading us toward something.”

“Let’s not step into it,” Jaxson said. “The ridge path swings east ahead. We’ll take the low line under it. If they want to cross us, they’ll have to come down into better footing.” He glanced at Boaz. “How’s the hand?”

“Better,” Boaz said. It wasn’t, quite, but he could close it without pain.

They cut under the ridge. The slope pinched the road into a narrow throat where shale rose on one side in layers and on the other fell away to a shallow gully full of black, storm-caught water. Thorns and knotweed crowded the edges. Every sound felt close.

Telen’s palm went up: halt. He crouched and touched two fingers to a darker smear across the mud. “Drag,” he said.

“Wolf?” Kiera asked, already loosening the sling from her belt.

“Boot,” Telen said. He drew a short line through the print’s edge. “Worn heel. Not one of ours.”

Aldryn’s eyes tracked the shale above them rather than the mud. “If I were setting an unfriendly welcome, I’d put it here. Rocks make poor allies but loyal accomplices.”

“Your pep talks are legendary,” Theo said under his breath.

A small sound came from somewhere up-slope—pebbles ticking over stone.

“Kestel?” Jaxson asked without looking up.

The hawk answered with a short, sharp cry from farther east, then arrowed away. Eira turned her head once and sidled along her branch, staring into the gray.

“Let’s keep moving,” Jaxson said. “We stay quiet, no chatter.”

They moved. The shale rasped under their boots. Boaz set each foot with care, then the next, muscles braced without looking like it. Thorne flowed beside him like poured liquid.

Halfway through, the slope above them made a dry sigh.

“Down!” Jaxson snapped.

The first stones came small. Then a sheet of shale let go and skated, flipping into plates that shattered on the road. Kiera seized Lyra’s sleeve and yanked her clear. Theo ducked and threw his arms over his head; Tink vanished into his collar like a coin into a purse. Shaye pivoted to cover Telen’s flank, blade angled across her forearm.

Boaz didn’t think. He put his burned hand out and made his will small, the way Aldryn had told him: not a wall, just a hand’s breadth of shape. Light snapped into a curved pane in front of him like a shield, no flare this time, no overreach, just a hard invisible shove that turned the skidding stones aside. They hit the shield and hissed away into the gully.

The slide ended as quickly as it had begun, leaving grit dusting their cloaks and the sharp smell of fresh stone in the air.

Theo peeked up. “If anyone asks, that was my plan and I executed it flawlessly.”

“You executed not dying,” Shaye said. “We’ll call it good.”

Aldryn clucked once, and eyed Boaz’s hand. “Smaller question,” he said, approving but not congratulating.

Boaz flexed his fingers. The skin stung and then eased. “Smaller answer, more subtle,” he said.

They cleared the rest of the pass at a quick pace. Once past it, the road widened into a shoulder of damp grass and scattered rock. The ridge lay above them to the right, a long knuckled spine. The mist pulled back a little.

Jaxson checked the high line again and stopped dead. “There,” he said.

The watcher stood closer than before. The cloak hung in straight lines that the wind didn’t seem to find, wrong against every moving thing in the scene. No bow or blade visible, just the sense of a person taking the measure of them, and not hurrying.

“Friend?” Theo tried weakly.

“Friends don’t hide,” Kiera said, low.

“Nor do they try to drop a hill on you,” Lyra added, still slightly breathless.

Aldryn lifted his staff, not threatening, simply announcing himself. “Travelers,” he called in the High Tongue first, then the Common. “We seek a clear road. If you want words, we have them. If you want our purses, you’ll be disappointed.”

The figure’s head tipped as if listening. It held for three heartbeats. Then smoke again. Gone.

“Did they leave us tracks this time?” Jaxson asked Telen.

Telen scanned the ridge with a hunter’s patience and then shook his head once. “No. But the stones say somebody stood there.”

“Stones don’t talk,” Theo said.

“Yours do,” Aldryn returned blandly.

Theo opened his mouth, shut it, then decided not to give the old man the pleasure.

They walked on. The watcher didn’t show for a while. The mist thinned to rags and the road shouldered along a series of low bowls where water gleamed. Birds finally made some noise: thin, hesitant calls from hedge and thorn that didn’t carry far.

“Why watch and run?” Lyra asked after a time. “If they wanted us dead, the slide was clever enough.”

“Maybe they want to see who we are when we think we’re being watched,” Jaxson said.

“Maybe they want us to keep looking up,” Shaye countered. “So we miss what’s under our feet.”

Theo glanced down so abruptly he nearly tripped. Tink smacked his chin with a paw as if to scold him for the lack of grace.

Aldryn stroked the staff with his thumb, thinking. “Some echo-workers liked to see how far a bound moment would carry,” he said. “That wight was crudely made, but it moved. Whoever is on that ridge may be measuring more than our number.”

“Then they can measure my patience quickly running out,” Kiera said.

They crested another small rise. The ridge curved away, then back, and there the figure stood again, silhouette cut thin against a lighter bank of fog. Jaxson nocked an arrow and drew, but did not loose. The watcher didn’t move.

“Show your face,” Kiera called, clear and steady. “Or be gone.”

Nothing, for a few moments, and then the shape broke apart and was gone.

“That makes three,” Jaxson said. “And enough.”

“Agreed,” Aldryn said. “We camp early. Open ground, no throat to choke us, with a windbreak and water if we can get both.”

“Not near the crossroads,” Telen added.

“Not near any spires that remember either,” Shaye said.

They pushed to a shallow shelf where a hawthorn bent like a tired man and a sliver of spring bled from under a cracked stone. It wasn’t far, but it put a fold of land between them and the ridge. Jaxson and Shaye set a triangle of watch stones and walked the perimeter. Telen cut a narrow run for the spring to fill a shallow basin. Kiera gathered dry scrub; Lyra shook rain from her cloak and from Mika’s crest. Eira lofted in the highest branch and settled herself in.

Theo got a flame going with more patience than the damp tinder deserved. Boaz stood a moment at the edge of the shelf and looked back toward the ridge. Nothing showed and nothing moved, but still, the feeling of being weighed didn’t leave.

Thorne touched his leg with a head-butt that was more “get on with it” than comfort. Boaz scratched behind one ear and went to help Kiera with the scrub. Behind them, the wind brought a faint sound across the bowls and gullies, one tick, then another, as if two small stones had tapped together. It could have been anything. It could have been a signal. No one mentioned it. They built the fire low and narrow, a stripe of heat and light just enough to see hands by. When the first pot murmured, the camp began to feel like a place of refuge rather than a pause. Watches were set without argument.

The mist began to slowly pull apart. And when Boaz finally sat, the Sigil quiet against his chest, he realized the worst part wasn’t the watcher disappearing. It was knowing the watcher could return whenever they wished.

Dinner was nothing fancy. They’d managed to trap a brace of rabbits earlier in the day, and Lyra roasted them on a spit over the low fire, rubbing the meat with dried herbs from her pouch. The smell filled the little hollow, strong enough to make Theo pace in a circle like Tink when she scented berries.

“You’d think we’d slain a dragon, the way this smells so good,” Theo said.

“Eat it before it burns,” Lyra replied, turning the spit with a practiced flick.

Kiera took the first bite and closed her eyes. “Not bad,” she admitted. “Better than the shoe leather we’ve been gnawing.”

“It was goat jerky,” Jaxson said flatly.

“Still leather,” Kiera said, mouth full.

Shaye sat cross-legged, a rabbit leg in hand, gnawing with deliberate bites. “If the Fungus doesn’t kill us,” she said between chews, “our usual food will.”

That earned a short laugh from Kiera, quick and sharp, and even Lyra smiled despite herself.

Theo finally snatched a piece and bit into it with gusto. “If I die eating rabbit, bury me with honor. Tell the world I fell in battle against a worthy foe.”

“You’ll be remembered as the man who couldn’t cook,” Shaye said.

“Accurate,” Jaxson added, deadpan.

Theo pointed his greasy rabbit bone at both of them. “Jealousy. That’s what this is. I’m an innovator. A pioneer in the field of applied flavor.”

“Applied nonsense,” Aldryn muttered.

The laughter rippled, small but real. For a moment the firelight almost felt like a shield against the weight of the day.

When the food was gone and the bones tossed into the flames, the company settled closer. The mist pooled thick in the gullies, faintly luminous where the fire touched it. Kestel roosted on a low branch, Eira wheeled once overhead before disappearing into the dark, and Thorne stretched long across Boaz’s boots, head up, ears twitching.

Theo had his staff across his knees, a chisel and knife out. He was carving again, humming tunelessly, his tongue caught between his teeth.

“Don’t tell me,” Lyra said, eyeing him. “Another rune you don’t understand.”

Theo brightened. “Exactly! Half a rune from the wagon. Look, perfect spiral, clean line. All it needs is a voice.”

“You don’t know what it does,” Boaz said.

Theo waved his greasy fingers. “That’s the joy of discovery.”

Aldryn stirred the embers with his staff. “Discovery is a polite word for accident.”

Theo muttered something that might’ve been an insult. He traced the rune with his thumb and spoke a clipped syllable. For a heartbeat the notch flared pale blue, a cold, brittle light that hummed in the air. Tink squeaked and dove into his collar. The glow guttered out. The wood went dark again. Theo shook his hand as though burned. “Well. That either means I’ve just invented the world’s smallest lantern, or I’ve shaved a year off my life.”

“Yes,” Aldryn said.

Theo groaned. “You’ve got to pick one.”

“No,” Aldryn said. His mouth barely twitched, but Lyra smirked and Kiera barked another laugh.

“Not funny,” Theo muttered, rubbing the rune with his sleeve. “I’m a genius unappreciated in my time.”

“Mostly unappreciated,” Shaye said.

The company’s voices faded after that. Jaxson fletched an arrowhead in silence. Lyra leaned against Mika’s shoulder, eyes closed. Telen sat watchful, his spear planted in the earth as if it alone stood guard.

Boaz stayed quiet, the Sigil pulsing faintly under his tunic. He turned the image of the wagon over in his head: the frozen tarp, the shards crawling into a wight, the watcher dissolving into smoke. He felt again the burn in his palm when the Sigil had answered him. The fire popped. Mist pressed close, thick and listening. The others shifted in their cloaks and fell asleep one by one. Boaz lay back, hand against the Sigil, Thorne’s weight pressed warm against his leg. The lynx blinked slow, steady, the way he always did when he wanted Boaz to rest.

But the pulse beneath Boaz’s ribs only grew stronger, steady as a second heartbeat, as if waiting for him to listen.

They kept watch in turns. Jaxson had the first, sitting with his back to a rock, bow across his knees. Shaye followed, quiet as the shadows themselves, eyes flicking to every shift of mist.

The others slept, or something close to it. Lyra still leaned against Mika’s shoulder, lips parted in half-breaths. Kiera had curled under her cloak, her sling within easy reach, with Eira in the branches above. Theo muttered once in his sleep, a hand sprawled across his notebook, while Tink rose and fell with each of his snores. Aldryn sat against a boulder, staff resting across his lap. His eyes were shut, but Boaz suspected he wasn’t asleep at all. Sleep took the others quickly, but Boaz lay awake longer. When his eyes finally closed, it was not rest that met him.

He stood on a plain of gray ash. No fire. No sky. Just emptiness stretching outward, colorless, endless, muffled as though the world itself had been silenced. His boots left no prints when he moved.

The wagon was there.

Not the way they’d found it, half-collapsed in the ditch, but whole. Horses strained at the harness, eyes wide, mouths open in a silent scream. The canvas snapped soundlessly above. A woman bent over her child, face twisted in terror, but there was no voice, just the image, caught forever in stone.

Boaz’s breath caught. He reached toward them. The wagon cracked. Lines split across the wood-that-was-not-wood, the stone surface fracturing. From the shards crawled a shape: arms, torso, a head forming from jagged edges. It pulled itself upright in a scream that finally carried sound, a sound Boaz felt in his bones: the voice of the woman, the child, the horses, all crying out at once, accusing.

The stone wight stood before him again, but larger than before, its jagged frame dripping with dust that became ash as it fell. Boaz’s hand went to his father’s sword, but the blade crumbled into gray fragments the moment he drew it. Only the Sigil still glowed against his chest.

The wight stepped forward, dragging its limbs as though each motion cost the world another memory. “You failed,” it groaned, its voice a hundred voices at once. “You carry judgment … but what do you judge with?”

Boaz staggered back, the Sigil burning hotter under his shirt. “I didn’t make you. I didn’t …”

“You will,” the wight answered. Its face shifted, features breaking and reforming: the mother’s mouth, the child’s eyes, then Aldryn’s stern gaze, Kiera’s grief, Lyra’s smile, each shattered into stone. “Your power mirrors your heart. Do you carry vengeance … or justice?”

The Sigil flared, red light spilling across the ash plain. Boaz threw his hand forward, trying to call the shield he knew. But it came too strong, blazing into a wall of fire that scorched his palm. The wight staggered, then straightened, its stone chest cracking wider.

“Vengeance,” it hissed. “You burn, and we burn with you.”

His view of the ash plain shifted. His companions appeared in a ring around him: Jaxson, Kiera, Lyra, Theo, Telen, Shaye. All ash-gray, all statues. Their eyes unblinking, their mouths open in silent screams. His heart hammered.

“No,” Boaz said. He stumbled among them, shaking shoulders that crumbled beneath his hands. “No! I don’t want this, I didn’t!”

The wight charged. Its stone fist came down like a hammer. Boaz flung up his arms, the Sigil blazing again, but this time he thought not of fire, not of destruction. He thought of truth.

He remembered Kiera’s song at the Traveler’s Rest, Lyra’s laughter over stew, Jaxson’s steady hand pulling her aside from danger, Theo carving runes with reckless hope. He remembered Thorne’s silent watch beside him every night. He thought of his father, bending over the forge, telling him that iron did not bend well if it was hammered in anger.

The Sigil answered.

Light burst from his chest, not red fire this time but silver-white, mirrored like the edge of a sharp blade. The wight’s blow struck, and rebounded, thrown back into its own chest. Cracks split wider across its form. Its scream echoed on itself, folding inward until it was choking on its own voice.

Boaz pushed forward. “Not vengeance,” he said, his voice shaking but growing stronger. “Justice. If you strike, it comes back. If you wound, you are wounded. If you burn, the flame burns you instead.”

The wight staggered. Fragments fell away. Its face shifted again, mother, child, Aldryn, Kiera, Lyra, all breaking apart into dust. Boaz thrust the Sigil’s light forward, not as fire, not as a shield, but as a mirror. The wight’s scream reflected upon itself until the sound shattered. Then it collapsed into ash, falling silent at last.

The wagon behind it dimmed, fading into the gray plain. For a heartbeat, Boaz thought he saw the woman and child whole, smiling, the horses calm in their traces. Then they were gone. The ground cracked under his feet. The ash fell away, dissolving into nothing, and he was falling too, the Sigil’s light dragging him down into blackness.

He woke with a gasp.

Thorne was on his chest, pinning him down, golden eyes wide and fierce, as if guarding him from something that had tried to enter the camp. Boaz’s cloak was damp with sweat. His hand still burned, the skin red and raw where the Sigil had flared.

Across the fire, Aldryn sat awake, staff across his knees, his eyes shadowed but steady. He didn’t turn his head. “The Sigil’s trying to teach you,” he said quietly. “You won’t master Vetharion by fearing it.”

Boaz swallowed, his throat tight. “I saw the wight again, and the wagon. I felt the Sigil answer, but it came as fire at first, too much. The second time, I called truth, and it worked, as justice. I have to try to do this next time.”

Aldryn closed the book he had been holding and set it aside. His voice was dry, but not unkind. “I think you’ve taken the first step.”

Boaz’s gaze dropped to Thorne, who still hadn’t moved from his chest, the lynx’s steady weight both anchoring and protective. The Sigil’s pulse slowed, easing back into rhythm with his own.

Boaz flexed his burned palm, holding it near the last glow of the fire. The vision still clung to him: the wight’s voice, the ash statues of his companions, the Sigil blazing not as fire but as mirror. He understood now what Vetharion required: not rage, not destruction, but reflection. Wrath had nearly consumed him, but justice had answered.

It was more than just the first step. The Sigil had shown him that Vetharion required balance: every blow returned, every wound echoed back. To wield it was not to unleash but to endure, to hold another’s strike and turn it into its own undoing. He felt the cost even in his bones: strength spent, pain shared, every act of justice leaving its mark on him as well.

Not vengeance. Never vengeance. If he blurred that line, the mirror would crack, and he would become what he feared.

Boaz drew a long breath, watching the mist creep along the slope. For a moment it thickened into the outline of a wagon, whole and unbroken, horses pawing, a woman clutching her child. He heard their voices faintly, the snap of rope, the catch of sobs. Then the scene shattered, dimmed to gray stone, and disappeared into fog.

Thorne rose to his feet, muscles taut, a rumble in his chest. “I see it too,” Boaz whispered. He rested his hand on the lynx’s flank, steadying himself. “But we’ll answer it next time. Not with fire. With truth.” The lynx pressed closer, and the growl faded to a low hum. The mist sighed, almost like words, too soft to catch.

Boaz stayed alert until the eastern sky lightened. When Kiera stirred, rubbing her eyes, he gave her a nod, signaling the watch was finished. She didn’t question his tension, just reached for her sling and took her place near the edge of camp.

By the time the others rose, the fire was gone to embers and the mist was thin. Packs were shouldered quickly, water taken from the spring, cloaks drawn tight against the cold. There was no talk of lingering.

They walked in silence through the last folds of the Pallor Hills, boots scuffing damp stone, the air sharp with the smell of wet moss. The road bent toward the east, widening at last, the land falling away into gentler slopes. And there, as the mist has thinned, they saw it:

The gates of Beltin.

Tall timbers reinforced with iron, scarred from old fire but still standing. Smoke rose thin from chimneys beyond the wall. A bell tolled somewhere, slow and deliberate, as though announcing that strangers approached.

The fellowship halted as one, standing in the washed light of dawn. Behind them, the Pallor Hills lay cloaked in fog, their echoes waiting. Ahead, the road sloped into the city.

Boaz touched the Sigil once beneath his tunic. Its pulse was steady, heavier now, as though it too knew the next trial waited behind those gates.

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