I followed the ridge line exactly as instructed, keeping the rocky outcropping to my left, pushing the kuda as fast as I dared without exhausting her, finding a sustainable pace that we could maintain for hours.
Chapter 18
Merrilee
Dawn.
The word echoed in my mind with every powerful stride of the kuda's legs, with every beat of my racing heart.
I didn't know how long I'd been riding—time seemed meaningless here.
The rock formations rose from the wasteland like the fingers of some buried giant reaching desperately toward the sky—five massive pillars of stone, ancient and weathered, casting long, dramatic shadows across the broken ground.
My heart leaped into my throat.
I urged the kuda forward with renewed urgency, my entire body tense with desperate hope.
The Welati were there. Somewhere in that valley.
Warriors with a code of honor.
People who kept their promises.
My only hope of saving Ahrick's life.
The air changed as we climbed higher into the mountain range. Thinner. Colder. Sharper. It burned in my lungs with each ragged breath, searing delicate tissue with every inhale, but I didn't care. I couldn't afford to care. I leaned forward into the kuda's neck, my fingers tangled desperately in her coarse mane,my body moving instinctively with hers as the ground rose steadily beneath us.
The rock formations—those massive stone fingers I'd spotted from the wasteland—loomed closer with every powerful stride. They were even more imposing up close, ancient and weathered by countless millennia, carved by wind and time and geological forces into shapes that looked almost deliberate.
Like someone had built them as markers.
Or warnings.
The thought sent a chill down my spine that hadn't to do with the cold mountain air.
The landscape shifted dramatically around us as we climbed. The barren wasteland gradually gave way to something stranger—vegetation that shouldn't exist in a place this harsh, this high, this hostile to life. Twisted trees with bark that looked like brushed metal, their surfaces reflecting the dying light in unnatural ways. Their branches were bare except for clusters of bioluminescent pods that pulsed with soft blue light, creating an eerie glow in the gathering darkness.
Vines grew in geometric patterns across the rocks, their growth too precise to be random, their leaves sharp-edged and crystalline, catching the light like fragments of stained glass.
Everything here felt like it would cut you if you touched it wrong. Like the entire ecosystem had evolved to be hostile, to repel intrusion, to wound the unwary.
The kuda navigated the increasingly treacherous terrain with practiced ease, her hooves finding purchase on rocks that looked too smooth, too steep, too unstable to support her weight. She moved like water flowing uphill—impossible, but undeniable.
We crested a ridge, and the valley opened up below us like a secret revealed.
The Welati.
I'd found the valley. Now I just had to find them and somehow convince them to help me. Convince them that a human girl they'd never met, carrying a stone given to someone else, deserved their aid.
I urged the kuda down the slope, my heart thundering in my ears so loudly I couldn't think, pulsing against my windpipe with each frantic beat. The stone was a solid weight in my pocket, pressing against my thigh with every movement, a constant reminder of what I was risking. What I was asking.
Please let this work. Please let them help. Please don't let Ahrick die because I failed.
The kuda's hooves struck stone, the sound echoing across the valley with alarming clarity.
Too loud.
Too obvious.
