The fire had burned down to embers when the sound came.

  It wasn’t a roar. It was a vibration, a low hum that came up through the ground and settled in the molars. Finley’s eyes snapped open. His father was already sitting up, one hand pressing Burren’s shoulder down into the moss. Ciney’s breath hitched beside him.

  From the village direction, a flash of sapphire light lit the undersides of the distant clouds, followed by a crack that was less a sound and more a physical slap against the air.

  Gunther was not in the hollow.

  Jacob’s boots crunched on charcoal. He stood at the edge of the village square, where the well had been. Now it was a crater of fused glass. Sihar paced a slow circle around him, her palms upturned, fingers twitching as she sampled the residual magic in the air.

  “Two distinct signatures,” she murmured. “The dragons’ fire ash, corrosive. And the rip-and-tear of Jacob’s storm. But there’s a third. Fainter. Old.”

  “Define old,” Jacob said, his eyes on the northern ridge where the dragons had vanished.

  “Not from the battle. Weeks, maybe months. A binding charm. Delicate work. Expensive.”

  Selene approached from the ruined chapel, a shard of obsidian-like stone in her gloved hand. “Scrying focus. They left it in the bell tower. They were watching the attack. Recording it, likely.”

  “For their archives,” Jacob spat. “Or their entertainment.”

  A rustle of leaves announced Gunther’s return. She moved silently for someone in leather and wool, a skill earned through years of work that required silence. Her face was grim in the moonlight. “The survivors are holding. The boy, Finley he’s sharp. He knows they can’t stay.”

  “They’ll scatter at dawn,” Selene said. “It’s all they can do.”

  “And we pursue at dawn,” Jacob stated. It wasn’t a question.

  Sihar stopped pacing. “The trail is cold in the air. But the land remembers.” She knelt, pressing her palm flat against the scorched earth. She closed her eyes. Her lips moved in a silent incantation. The soil around her hand darkened, then glistened with a sudden, unnatural damp. Tiny pinpricks of phosphorescence swirled in the moisture not water, but a spectral residue. “They flew north-northwest. A straight line. Arrogant. Didn’t bother to weave.”

  “Blackstone Peaks,” Gunther said.

  “The sentinel will have seen the end of the fight,” Selene warned. “They know we’re here. The approach won’t be covert.”

  Jacob’s smile was a thin, hard line. “We’re not approaching. We’re observing. Gunther, you have the high-ground eyes. Sihar, you read the land. I’ll handle the sky. Selene, ride like the wind is your enemy. The Council needs to know the kings are not just turning a blind eye they’re holding the door open for the slaughter.”

  First light was a smear of grey in the east. Finley watched it from the mouth of the hollow, his knees pulled to his chest. Behind him, people stirred, gathering their pitiful bundles.

  His father came to sit beside him. He didn’t speak for a long time. Then, “Your mother’s sister. In Oakhaven. It’s three days’ hard walk west. Might be… might be safer.”

  “Might be next,” Finley said, the words ash in his mouth.

  His father’s hand, rough and heavy, settled on his neck. “Can’t think like that, son. You have to run toward something, not just away.”

  Ciney appeared, her face pale but set. “Burren says some are heading for the riverlands, to become boat-folk. Others for the deep woods. Splitting up makes us harder to track.”

  “Where will you go?” Finley asked.

  She looked at him, then at his father. “Oakhaven sounds as good as any.”

  The decision was made without another word. A dozen of the survivors chose to go with them. The rest melted into the forest in twos and threes, their goodbyes whispered, their eyes hollow. Finley’s last sight of Burren was the old woodsman turning south, his axe over his shoulder, a solitary figure swallowed by the mist between the trees.

  They had just shouldered their packs when a figure emerged from the gloom. Gunther. She carried no pack, just a long staff of dark wood.

  “Oakhaven?” she asked Finley’s father, who nodded. Gunther studied the grey sky. “Good. Stay under the canopy as long as you can. Move quickly. Don’t light fires.” She hesitated, then reached into a pouch at her belt. She handed Finley three smooth river stones, each inscribed with a single, glowing rune. “Throw one behind you if you feel you’re being followed. It won’t stop a dragon. It will blind anything with eyes for ten heartbeats. Use the time to run.”

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  Finley’s fingers closed around the warm stones. “Thank you.”

  Gunther’s gaze was flint. “This is not protection. This is a chance. Don’t waste it.” She turned and was gone, moving back toward Highglen with a speed that seemed impossible.

  Jacob stood on the highest remaining wall of Highglen’s mill. The dawn wind tugged at his cloak. Below, Selene tightened the girth on her spectral mare, a creature of condensed moonlight and shadow that would run until the moon set again.

  “Tell the Council we need a strike force,” Jacob said, his voice carrying down. “Not just mages. Ward-breakers. Earth-shapers. And a mandate to engage the cult directly, nobility be damned.”

  Selene swung into the saddle. The mare pawed the air, leaving hoof-prints of frost on the charred ground. “They’ll argue. Politics.”

  “Show them the scrying focus. Show them the kings’ decree. Then remind them what happens when the sheep are gone, and the wolves still need to eat.” Jacob locked eyes with her. “Hurry.”

  She nodded once, dug her heels, and the mare shot forward not along the road but through it, becoming a streak of silver mist that vanished into the forest.

  Sihar was already waiting at the tree line north of the village. Gunther joined them moments later, nodding to Jacob, who dropped from the wall, landing in a crouch that kicked up a plume of soot.

  “No ceremony,” Jacob said. “Sihar, take point. Find the trail their passage left in the world’s memory. Gunther, flank high, watch for scouts. I’ll take the rear. We move fast and quiet until the Peaks are in sight. Then we crawl.”

  They ran.

  It was not a run a normal human could match. Sihar moved with a strange, gliding step, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground. Where she passed, ferns straightened, and bent grasses whispered. She was listening. Gunther flowed through the upper branches like a shadow, silent and nearly invisible. Jacob brought up the rear, a low thrum of power in his wake that seemed to discourage the attention of forest creatures. Birds fell silent as they passed.

  They covered leagues in hours. The land began to rise, the lush forest giving way to rocky slopes and stunted, wind-twisted pines. The air grew thin and cold.

  Sihar halted on a barren outcrop. Below, a vast, desolate valley stretched out, leading to a jagged wall of mountains that clawed at the sky. The Blackstone Peaks. Even from here, the wrongness was palpable. The stone was not black, but a sickly, streaked grey, like old bones. No snow capped them, despite the altitude.

  Sihar pointed to the valley floor. To the untrained eye, it was empty. But as Jacob focused, he saw it a faint, shimmering ribbon in the air, a ghostly contrail of malignant magic and draconic heat, curving up toward the highest central peak.

  “There,” Sihar whispered.

  Gunther dropped from a pine behind them, landing without a sound. “Sentinel’s perch. That eastern spire. It’s empty.”

  Jacob’s eyes narrowed. “They pulled it back. They’re expecting company. Or they’ve already left for the next hunt.”

  “Only one way to know,” Gunther said.

  The rest of the day was a lesson in agony and patience. They did not use magic. They moved inch by inch, using rock and shadow as cover. The cold seeped into their bones. The silence was absolute, broken only by the moan of the wind through the stone teeth of the peaks.

  As dusk bled across the valley, they reached the base of the central peak. A great, jagged maw of a cave opened in the mountainside, easily two hundred feet high. The ground before it was scarred with immense, clawed footprints and littered with bones cattle, deer, and others that were disturbingly larger.

  And there was light. Not firelight, but a cool, blue-white radiance from deep within the cavern.

  “No guards at the entrance,” Gunther observed from a niche above.

  “Arrogant,” Jacob repeated, his hand resting on the hilt of his blade. “Or a trap.”

  Sihar crouched, placing her hand on the stone. She flinched, snatching it back. “The stone is… singing. A low frequency. A warning system. Touch it, and they know.”

  “Can you silence it?” Jacob asked.

  “For a span of twenty breaths. No more.”

  “It’ll have to be enough. Gunther, you’re our eyes. Get to a vantage. Sihar, the moment we’re clear, you muffle the stone. We go in, we see what there is to see, we get out.”

  Gunther melted into the gathering darkness. Jacob and Sihar waited, counting heartbeats. A soft owl call echoed Gunther was in position.

  Sihar nodded. She placed both hands on the rock face beside the cave entrance. A ripple of calm, of deep silence, spread from her touch. The very air seemed to deaden.

  “Go,” she hissed.

  They moved into the dragon’s den.

  The cavern was a cathedral of nightmare geology. Stalactites hung like petrified organs. The floor was smooth, polished by centuries of scaled bodies. The blue-white light came from massive, glowing fungi that clung to the walls, casting long, dancing shadows.

  And it was not empty.

  At the far end of the vast chamber, nestled on a plateau of accumulated treasure, was a dragon. A Red, smaller than the one that had attacked Highglen, but still the size of a warship. It was asleep, coils of smoke rising from its nostrils with each rumbling breath. Its hide glittered in the fungal light, coins and gems stuck to its scales by old resin and heat.

  But it was not the dragon that froze Jacob’s blood.

  It was the pavilion.

  To the left of the treasure mound, set back in a smoothed alcove, was a structure of dark silk and polished ebony. Lanterns of enchanted crystal illuminated a sumptuous arrangement: low couches, a table laden with crystal decanters and silver platters holding fruits that shimmered with unnatural color. Five figures sat there, dressed not in robes, but in the elegant, understated silks of the ultra-wealthy.

  Two men and three women. They were sipping wine, speaking in low, conversational tones. One of the women gestured languidly toward the sleeping dragon, and the others laughed, the sound echoing lightly in the monstrous space.

  A servant in a grey tunic a human servant refilled a glass.

  Jacob’s grip on his sword turned his knuckles white. These were the cult. Not skulking in shadows, but picnicking in the belly of the beast. He saw the scrying orb, dark now, on a stand beside the table.

  Sihar touched his arm, her face a mask of cold fury. She pointed.

  Past the pavilion, in a narrower tunnel leading deeper into the mountain, was a holding pen. Rough bars of iron, magically reinforced, contained two dozen people. Peasants, by their dress. They huddled together, silent in their terror. Not food for the dragon. Bait.

  One of the noblemen, a tall man with a neatly trimmed beard, stood. He raised his voice, polished and clear. “Our Green friend reports the mages have split their forces. One returns to cry to the Council. The others… well, they are surely lurking about.” He smiled, looking directly toward the shadows where Jacob and Sihar stood frozen. “You can come out, Jacob Stormcaller. The stone-song told us of your presence the moment you crossed the threshold. We’ve been expecting you.”