“You felt that?” I ask, voice tight.
He doesn’t answer. But his expression softens, almost imperceptibly. He looks not just alert, but conflicted.
“I need to take Mari home,” I say, even though I don’t want to move.
He nods.
I gather my daughter and her collection of festival debris and make my way back through the square, away from the thinning crowd and the lanterns that still sputter faintly behind us. I don’t look back.
But I feel him.
Watching.
And for once, it doesn’t feel like something I should be afraid of.
CHAPTER 6
HARDIN
The wards split open just before dawn.
There’s no warning the way there used to be. No shift in the tree line. No crack in the bones of the wind. Just the sudden, thick reek of burned fur and something older, something that smells like copper left too long in a dry mouth.
I feel it before I see it, rising up from the northern end of the Hollow where the fog rarely thickens, a ripple in the warding that should have burned whatever crossed through. But it didn’t. And that means the damn thing knew exactly where to push.
I grab my blade from the forge wall, the silver still warm from the last sharpening, and I take the shortcut through the streambed, boots pounding over wet rock, steam curling up with every breath. By the time I reach the bend where the trees arch toward each other like bowed heads, the air is wrong. The birds are silent. The moss is gray. There’s ash on the ferns.
And the creature waiting just past the line is not from this side.
It’s tall—taller than I am—and twisted in that particular way things from the Veil tend to be, like it was never meant to hold shape for long. Its bones bulge in the wrong places. Its skin, if you can call it that, stretches too thin across its shoulders andglistens like beetle shells left in the sun too long. It turns its head when it hears me, too slow, too curious, like it’s not afraid of anything and never has been.
I don’t speak to it. You don’t talk to beasts that come through cracked wards. You put them down.
It lunges first. They always do.
The fight isn’t clean. I don’t need clean, I need fast. I drive my blade through its chest on the third pass, twist hard, and drag it free just in time to avoid a slash that would’ve opened my ribs. The creature howls—not with pain, but with fury that I dared to touch it—and thrashes backward into the underbrush, black blood steaming as it hits the ground.
The Hollow answers. The roots rise. The mist thickens. And the beast, whatever it was, is dragged screaming into the dirt like it never belonged above it.
I breathe. Once. Twice. The air clears.
But the ash stays. And the smell. The old, bitter smell of fire and blood.
That’s what tells me this wasn’t random.
The council meets by midday.Not because they like urgency, but because something that gets through the outer wards without tripping the inner lines makes even the quiet ones twitch.
Vess stands at the center of the circle like she always does, robes drawn tight and hair pinned back with something that hums faintly when she moves. Her expression is all calm gravity, but her eyes are sharper than usual. She’s already guessed too much.
To her left, Roderik glowers from beneath his ridiculous wide-brimmed hat, long fingers tapping against his cane like he’s waiting for an excuse to say something smug. He alwaysis. Beside him, Sariah paces, boots scuffing the stone with every pass, muttering curses under her breath in a language that probably isn’t human. And across from them, Therrin leans in the shadows, his arms folded, eyes glowing faintly amber beneath the edge of his hood. He hasn’t said a word.
They’re all looking at me like I brought the thing in myself.
“Are you sure it came through the northern line?” Vess asks, though she already knows the answer.
“Watched it myself,” I say, voice low. “It walked through the fault line we sealed after the warshade breach. Didn't even blink.”
“Then the seal didn’t hold,” Roderik says, tone oily. “Which begs the question, why?”
