Sylric stepped over. "If you're marked by that thing, we pull back. We regroup. We don't open doors we don't understand."
Lindarion looked up. "We already did."
He pulled the distorted sketch from the ruined camp from inside his coat.
The black void scratched so hard it tore the page.
Stitch stared. "They weren't sketching it. They were recording it changing."
Luneth stepped in closer. "It's active."
"No mana," Sylric said again.
"Then we're measuring this wrong," she replied.
Lindarion tapped the sketch once.
"This part," he said. "It matches the resonance in my core. I didn't want it to. It just does."
Sylric sat down hard. "So we're dealing with a structure that was carved by someone who doesn't use mana, responds to void affinity, and behaves like a lock."
"Yes," Lindarion said.
Kael cracked his knuckles. "What happens if someone opens it?"
Mekir's voice came, dry and low. "Then someone answers."
And no one spoke after that.
Because it didn't feel like speculation.
Lindarion couldn't sleep.
He sat beside Ashwing at the top of the ridge, one hand pressed to warm scales. The dragon was quiet tonight. No grumbling. No smoke.
He just watched the valley below.
The rune glowed faintly under starlight. Not with magic.
Shapes that shouldn't exist unless someone drew them on purpose.
Lira sat nearby. Not close. Not far.
Eventually, she said. "You were right not to burn it."
"Didn't feel like mine to destroy."
She glanced sideways at him. "Feels like yours to open."
Because she was right.
And tomorrow, he'd have to decide if he was brave enough to do it.
Or foolish enough not to.
In the dark, everything moved wrong.
Luneth woke with a start. Damp sweat on her wrist where it pressed against the cold stone of her bench.
The camp was silent, but in her mind, the cliffs had eyes, deep voids opening and closing with a breath that wasn't air.
She kept her hood down. The firelight had died. No one stirred. No one stirred ever when she woke .
Something called beyond sight.
She walked without thinking.
Through narrow pathways that dissolved into shadow. The mountain walls loomed too close, pressing in, like they'd learned the shape of her steps and wanted to mimic them.
A low hum thrummed in her bones. Not magic. Pain. Deep as roots. Something inside of her had been ignited.
She felt the rune before she saw it.
Not as shape. As shock. Something cold and shape-shifting, like a shadow between her ribs seeking purchase.
When she finally saw it, the circle carved into stone, her stomach clenched.
The lines shifted against reason. Angles that should've remained constant wavered, flicking like flame. Branches of the rune thrummed, expanding then snapping back in an instant.
Something opened at the center. A black shape. A void that didn't belong to the stone. It reached out for her.
Felt the cliff beneath her give way.
Took a step, and fell.
Blood pounded in her skull.
Her hand flew to her side, where on the sleeping bag beneath her coat, something throbbed.
She sat up, heart hammering, breath shallow.
Tried to keep her face still.
But the pain was real.
Not enough to bleed. Not enough to cripple.
Enough to remind her she was alive.
Alive and in proximity.
She pressed her fingers against the spot. Felt the hammer-beat of her pulse.
But no one had carved it.
Because to move was to invite it back.
She breathed deeper. Slowed.
Thought of Lindarion's shape in the dark, sitting beside Ashwing.
And what would happen when they returned.
Eventually, exhaustion found her again.
Turned toward the dark.
But tired wasn't release.
Lindarion woke to the sound of her breathing.
Saw her hood half up, her face pale in starlight.
Something had broken.
He reached for her hand.
She didn't pull away.
He didn't say anything.
Just breath against breath.
At dawn, she'd be okay.
The morning air was thin. Not cold, just hollow. Like something had taken a bite out of it and left the edges behind.
Lindarion sat near the edge of camp, elbows on his knees, coat pulled tight around his chest. His breath didn't fog.
The wind didn't bite. But the pressure hadn't left. Not since last night. Not since he touched the rune.
The others were waking. Slow, measured. Kael stretched with a grunt, shoulder popping loud enough to startle a bird from the brush.
Rythe checked her spear, movements clipped. Mekir hadn't moved. Probably hadn't slept.
Ashwing circled above, wings low and wide. No sound. Just that steady beat of shadow over stone every few minutes. Watching.
Lindarion's eyes drifted sideways—then stopped.
Luneth was awake. Sitting against the wall of the outcrop where they'd all bunked for the night. Her hood was off. Hair tangled.
Shoulders drawn. She hadn't looked at anyone since the sun came up.
He stood. Walked over slowly, keeping his steps quiet.
"You sleep?" he asked.
Then, finally, her voice, low, like something scraped raw. "Not really."
Her gaze didn't lift from the dirt.
He crouched next to her. Not close. Just enough.
Her hand was clenched. White-knuckled.
That pulled her eyes up, slow, reluctant.
She looked tired. Not just sleep-deprived. Something else. Her pupils were tight, unfocused, like she was seeing two different worlds at once and trying to choose which one she belonged to.
"I don't know," she said.
She didn't add anything.
But she didn't need to.
Lindarion could feel it too. That pressure humming under the rock. The residue of something bigger. Something ancient.
The rune hadn't activated.
But it had reached out.
And Luneth had been closest.
He stood. She didn't stop him.
As he turned to walk back toward the others, his thoughts caught on one thing.
That look in her eyes wasn't confusion. It wasn't pain. It was recognition.
Something in that rune had spoken to her.
And she understood at least part of it.
Even if she didn't want to.