The smell of smoke still lingered faintly on the wind as they left Ylthara behind. The ruins of the city were little more than a distant silhouette now, a smudge of black and grey against the horizon. The faint column of ash twisting toward the clouds was the last trace of what had been.
Ahead, far in the distance, the Ironforge Mountains rose like jagged sentinels, their snow-dusted peaks glinting beneath the morning sun. Even from here, they looked cold, sharp, and distant—an unforgiving wall of stone separating them from whatever waited beyond.
Kai sat at the front of the carriage, the reins loose in one hand as he worked the other against the sigil etched into his chest. The sigil was a permanent scar of his own making, burned into his flesh through careful precision and weeks of trial and error. A lattice of blackened lines twisted over his sternum, pulsing faintly with the rhythm of his mana flow.
He traced one of the outer arcs, and the lines shifted, just slightly.
