She smiles. It is faint, but it is hers.
“Make… it count,” she whispers.
“I will,” I promise.
Then I loose a roar so loud it could shake the heavens, and I let the stone take her.
The earth opens beneath her body without a sound, soft as a sigh, accepting her gently into its depths.
Flowers of pale quartz bloom along the edges of the new seam, then fade as the crack seals itself, leaving only a faint, luminous spiral in the rock.
A marker.
A grave.
A vow.
I stand slowly.
My hands are shaking.
I do not tremble.
Not in front of my brothers.
Not in front of my people.
But grief is a tectonic thing, and right now it is shifting everything inside me.
“Dagan,” Thorne says, quieter now.
“I know,” I answer.
Because that’s the worst part.
I do.
I know exactly what Idris has done.
He has taken one of our brightest mapmakers of the dream paths and turned her into a key.
He now knows routes even we have forgotten, hidden veins that wind through sanctums and forges and old places that should never be touched.
This will not go unanswered.
“Report,” I bark, turning from the glowing spiral to the captives we’ve already gathered.
They’re penned in a circle of stone not far from the rubble of the village square—two dozen SoulTakers and sympathizers left behind as Idris’ main force retreated.
Their eyes are glassy, movements jerky, strings dangling from unseen fingers.
Not all of them are enemies.
Some are mine.
Farmers. Quarrymen. Wanderers taken by promises of easy power, twisted by rituals they did not understand.
“We’ve confined those we can save,” Kael says. “Bound their limbs. Suppressed their access to the deepest currents.”
