The night moved on, slow and heavy. The cold of the earth climbed up his legs, but Zirel remained motionless, his senses strung tight like bowstrings.
Then, a change. The beasts—until then agitated in their ordinary chaos—fell still as one. Growls, quarrels, cackles: everything died. A leaden silence descended over the clearing.
And suddenly, they all turned as one toward the two poles.
Renn and Kael began to shake. Not from fatigue, not from cold—but from violent, uncontrollable convulsions, as if an invisible current was twisting them from within. Their mouths opened in a mute scream, their muscles standing out beneath the skin, distorted by a force that was not their own.
Zirel felt his stomach clench. This was neither interrogation nor punishment.
It was a rite.
