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“Maps?” Ollie asked.

“Of a sort,” Zephyr replied.

Tenny looked down, squinting in the limited light. Tristan fetched one of the lanterns and brought it closer, and Tenny couldn’t stop the soft whimper from escaping her tongue as the images before her became clear.

One of the sheets contained a detailed anatomical drawing of a human body, the figure’s arms and legs spread wide. Body parts were labeled with crudely written symbols, messily marked as though they had been written in⁠—

“Is that blood?” Tenny asked.

“Yes,” replied Zephyr. “It’s on this one too.” She placed another piece of parchment on top of the sheets, unfolding it to reveal a map of Arcanis. “Look at what they’ve marked here.”

Tenny raked her eyes over the map to see similar symbols strewn across it. But they didn’t seem to be denoting cities or villages or roads. They were concentrated on where there were⁠—

“Mana springs,” said Ollie.

“The veins of the world,” Zephyr said.

“What do the markings mean?” asked Tenny, her voice quiet, like she was afraid that speaking too loud might awaken the dark magic clearly at play here.

“I thought you knew how to read the Old Language,” Ollie said, bumping her shoulder playfully.

“I learned how to read a book of fairy tales, and just passably.” She rolled her eyes at the fae, though she was grateful for the moment of levity, however fleeting. “Very different from . . . whatever this is.”

“Good thing we’ve someone who has been around long enough to be something of an expert, then,” Tristan said, gesturing for Zephyr to proceed.

The sylvan pulled the first sheet from beneath the map, then pointed her slender green finger at a mark placed next to the figure’s right wrist. “Power,” she said solemnly, then pointed to the other wrist. “Spirit.” She pointed to a symbol above the figure’s head. “Mind.”

“And that one?” Tenny tapped on the page next to a symbol that looked like two interlocking circles with a line piercing through them at an angle. It was placed directly on top of where the figure’s heart would be.

“Life.”

Tenny pushed the page aside, scanning the map once more. Each mana spring was labeled with a symbol—sometimes more than one. “Power” and “mind” were the most common, with the easternmost springs, most notably the one that sat under Nyrundelle’s Sacred Mountain, also garnering a mark for “spirit.”

But there was only one spring marked with the symbol for “life,” and it sat directly across the Chasm from Kinsgaith.

Tenny looked up, as though she might be able to see through the shack’s wooden walls to the mana spring far on the other side of the Chasm.

“You already understand, don’t you?” Zephyr asked.

“This is where he intends to pierce the Line,” Tenny whispered into the air. She glanced down at the map again, seeing now that the stretch of the Chasm that lay between Kinsgaith and the mana spring had been filled in with blood. “Malakar will venture into the Chasm and attempt to commandeer Arcanis’s very lifeblood.”

“We think so,” Tristan said, all signs of his typical humor erased from his face. “And from the things Zephyr has overheard in the village, we believe he is on his way here now.”

“We have to tell the others,” Ollie said quickly.

“But how? Elyria sent a sparrow, but the damned thing disappeared on me before it had even finished its message.”

Tenny glanced at Zephyr, whose face had fallen. “You heard what happened though. To Elderglade.”

“Yes,” she said, voice strangled.

“I am so sorry.”

“If my people are safe, that is all that matters. We must endeavor to ensure it stays that way.”

Tristan cleared his throat. “Right. Which means getting Ric, Elle, and the others up here as soon as possible to stop these rat bastards.”

“We would have sent something to them already, but you two are the only ones we’d been communicating with,” said Zephyr. “Last we’d heard, you were coming here and⁠—”