Keiren’s eyes flash in my mind—blue turning gold, sorrow turning into fire. The journal.I will burn them all.
Evelen shoulders her satchel and fastens a hooded cloak around me, heavy with protective stitching. “I’ll take you to where the tunnel forks. After that, you must choose your path.”
Evelen’s herbs drag me down into a dreamless dark, the kind of sleep that feels less like rest and more like surrender. When I wake, it is without panic. Without pain. The ache in my limbs has dulled to a memory, distant and manageable, like a storm seen from far offshore.
She is waiting when I rise, lantern already lit.
We move through a crumbling alcove where the stone has folded inward on itself like a half-remembered thought. The lantern flame throws long shadows against the damp walls, and the air cools as the tunnel slopes downward, whispering across my cheeks.
“Stay close,” Evelen murmurs. “These tunnels shift. Only the wards keep them from swallowing us.”
Our boots echo softly on wet stone. Water drips from above in slow, patient rhythms. Roots snake through cracks in the ceiling, their tips swollen and slick, feeding on whatever magic lingers here. The earth smells old—older than kingdoms, older than vows.
At a fork in the passage, Evelen stops.
The stone here is carved smooth by centuries of passing feet. One tunnel bends gently left, wide and well-worn, its air warmer, almost welcoming. The other narrows sharply to theright, plunging into shadow so deep the lantern light seems to hesitate before touching it.
Evelyn lifts her lantern higher.
“The path to the left will take you back to Veyora,” she says quietly.
My breath catches.
“It will carry you out beyond the dragon’s wards,” she continues, her voice steady, unflinching. “Back to the outer roads. From there, you could hide. Take another name. Wait out the next year and a half while the Bloodmoon wanes.”
Images rise unbidden—green hills, quiet inns, the steady anonymity of survival.
“There are ships that leave the western ports,” she adds. “If you had the coin, you could buy passage. Flee the country entirely. Live.” She turns to face me fully now, eyes sharp beneath her hood. “But if you go left,” she says, “you leave the rest of us to burn.”
The words settle between us like ash.
I look again at the paths. The left tunnel slopes upward, its stone worn pale by safety and repetition. I can almost see it, Veyora waiting on the other side. Silence. Distance. A life spent watching the sky instead of challenging it.
I could live.
I could disappear.
Evelyn presses her palm to a carving etched into the wall—a dragon, wings spread, climbing skyward.
“The right path leads deeper,” she says. “Toward the Trial. Toward what waits for you.”
She kneels by a shallow stream that cuts through the cavern, its waters glowing with soft, silvery light. When she touches my bruises, the pain drains away like smoke in the wind. When she unwraps my arm, the flesh beneath is whole again.
“You’ll need your strength,” she murmurs.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She rises, the silver threads in her braid catching the glow of the lantern. “Follow the stream until you see a stone shaped like an egg. Beyond that ridge lies the cave. There, your fate awaits you.”
She pauses, studying me with eyes far too old to lie.
“Good luck, child,” she says at last. “May the stars brighten your way.”
At the cavern’s mouth, she presses parting gifts into my hands: a thin loop of cord, worn smooth by use, and a bone-hilt knife etched with constellations so fine that they shimmer when I tilt it. The blade is light. Balanced. Honest.
I touch the vigil braid at my wrist—thorn-red, ash-black, star-white—thinking of Mariel and Vivian. It hums faintly, steady as a heartbeat.
Ahead, the tunnel divides once more.
