Chapter 18
Dagan
The Rooted Marches
The tremor hits like a fist to the spine.
Not in the stone beneath my boots—deeper.
In the marrow of Nightfall itself.
I straighten from the war-table, my grip tightening on the carved edge.
The roots woven through the floor flare faintly green, then sickly yellow. A warning.
“Stone’s Edge,” I say, the words coming out a growl. “The village on the eastern escarpment—do you feel it?”
Kael’s head snaps up.
Alaric goes very still, gaze going distant like he’s listening to the high currents.
Thorne’s flame-ink ripples beneath his skin, reacting to the same distant pressure I feel.
“Something just cracked,” Alaric murmurs. “Like a note gone off-key.”
“Not something,” I bite out. “Someone.”
I close my eyes and reach down—past the stone pillars and vaulted ceilings of The Barrow, past the bedrock of the Rooted Marches, deeper into the bones of the realm.
The earth answers.
Heat. Strain.
A shudder running along an old fault line toward the escarpment.
A ripple of wrongness spreading out from a single sharp point.
And beneath it, like a dying ember struggling in wet ash—fear.
“SoulTakers,” I snarl, eyes snapping open. “They’re attacking at Stone’s Edge.”
Alaric curses softly. “That’s a small settlement, isn’t it? Clinging to the cliff face?”
“Yes,” I say. “One of the old Dreamwright outposts.”
Thorne’s gaze narrows. “There are still weavers there?”
“One,” I answer. “A retired Dreamwright from the Verdant Sanctum. Masielle.”
Kael swears under his breath this time. “If Idris takes her?—”
“He wouldn’t just take her,” Alaric cuts in grimly. “He would break her. Tear every pattern she’s ever held out of her mind.”
“And with it,” I finish, rage grinding through my jaw, “the hidden routes into the inner sanctums. The back doors to the forges. The emergency conduits only the elder weavers know.”
The room feels smaller all at once.
I can see it in my mind too easily.
