The text describes upcoming alignment—our Convergence—detailing need for simultaneous anchor-points and tri-realm harmony. It ends with prophetic seal stating:Last voice shall still the storm by dying where storm began.
Vision slams behind my eyes. I see myself—crystal spreading to skull—standing in circle of flames at Feramundi gate, chanting until words fracture into screams, until body calcifies in final glimmer, until Kylan howls and the world resets around my ash.
The vision hits so hard I stagger back. Kylan’s grip tightens.
“What did you see?” The low growl, equal parts fear and command.
I swallow, forcing calm mask. “Just instructions.” I slide tablet into pack before he glimpses final lines. “We must hurry to Twilight Forest—the council must align anchor teams.”
He searches my face. Bond spark twitches; I throttle its flow, hide dread beneath mental wards. If he glimpses truth now, he would chain himself to that future and tear it apart, jeopardizing the broader ritual.
“Your heartbeat rabbits,” he says quietly.
“Translation strain,” I lie. “Let’s leave. Guardian torpor might end soon.”
He doesn’t believe me, but shrine starts to rumble—stone responding to removed tablets or approaching storm. Choice steels him: protect now, question later.
We retrace steps. As Kylan helps me ascend spiral, floor below shifts. Starlight basin at sanctum’s heart flares, disgorges thin wisp of crystal smoke—birth of new slug? We escape before confirmation.
In antechamber I pause, brush mural once more. Old glyphs flicker. I whisper, “Thank you.” They dim like satisfied eyes.
Outside, clouds gather along southern peaks. Sun dips behind ridge; eight bells near. We descend the ledge, Kylan guiding but glancing back often. When wind gusts, I wrap cloak tighter, hiding trembling lips.
Ticking clock pulses behind ribs. Prophecy writes death sentence with my name, yet hope flickers—maybe we’ll find substitute offering. Maybe not. But I’ve chosen silence until options surface.
At camp shelf we shoulder full packs. Kylan eyes sky. “South gate before moonrise. You up to it?”
I nod. “Let’s run.” Energy borrowed from fear thrums; crystal glitters.
As we start downward, I test weight of hidden truth. Heavy, yes, but I will carry it until a path emerges. If final voice mustbe mine, so be it. For now, hope remains breatheable. And hope, whispered quietly enough, might just outrun prophecy’s echo.
10
KYLAN
Wind scythes across the high pass with an edge keen enough to peel bark from larches. Moonlight has long fled; morning has not yet bruised the horizon. Between those two silences stretches the Frostmaw Causeway, a spine of layered ice bridging one mountain flank to the next. No walls guard its sides. One mis-step, and the traveler plummets into a gorge so deep rumor says daylight never finds its floor.
I breathe the air—cold enough to sting lung linings—then set boot to the first translucent slab. Embedded bubbles glitter under my foot like trapped starlight. Behind me Carmilla follows, smaller steps landing precisely inside my prints. Her cloak swirls around her ankles, crystalline threads along her throat flashing whenever stray auroral ghosts flicker overhead. She paces carefully, conserving energy after yesterday’s hours beneath the shrine.
“The bridge hasn’t groaned in decades,” I assure, voice soft to avoid echo. “Frost dwarfs compressed the ice with runic harmonics.”
Her reply arrives on warm breath clouds. “Ice sings its own warnings. I listen.”
We continue, rope connecting us loose but ready. My senses roam. Somewhere beyond the next ridge, Rowan oversees pack den and ashes of a pupil. Farther east, realms bleed into each other like watercolor ruin. And down in the pouch at my hip, the obsidian shard holds the cold of all those distances.
A caw slices the hush. I halt, gaze snapping upward. A raven circles overhead, wings charcoal slate. No ordinary carrion bird travels this altitude in winter—not unless coaxed by magic or message instinct. The creature dives, leveling at eye height, talons clicking against a bone cylinder tied to its leg.
Carmilla lifts a gloved hand. “Safe perch.” She utters a quartet of soft consonants; the bird’s wings stall, and it lands on her wrist, feathers ruffling in brief show of dignity.
The thin crystal lattice across her cheek pulses in command rhythm, coaxing the raven calm. I unlatch the tube. Seal bears Rowan’s sigil: stylized paw print nested in tree ring. Heartbeat jumps. I crack wax, slide parchment free. Ink still wet; Rowan wrote with hasty quill. Under my breath I read:
Alpha,
Tarry not. Third patrol returns coughing black sand. Eyes veined midnight. Signs match cub infiltration. We confine infected beyond pine ward, but numbers rise. Two border stones dark. Await counsel.
?R.
I grip the edge so hard frost spider-webs beneath thumb. Wolves dying slow under shard poison. And I walk the opposite direction chasing council discourse.
