The frost had not yet melted when they moved again.
Silence pressed in from every direction—not empty, but expectant—like the hush of a courtroom just before a verdict is read. The trees loomed over them like silent judges, their limbs tangled into unnatural spirals. Their bark was too angular, ridged with silver veins that pulsed faintly as if the forest itself had veins and breath. The air was thin, sharp, and charged with energy so old it bypassed language, brushing against the skin like a question that couldn't be answered.
Lysander walked at the head of the trio, the last of the Gravebinder's icy remnants still trailing behind him in fractured patterns on the forest floor. His sword remained unsheathed—not out of arrogance, but necessity. The frost fire along its edge no longer burned with the same urgency as before, but it hadn't extinguished either. It was as though the blade itself remained alert, its core aware of the magic threaded through the land.
His knuckles were white around the hilt, but not from fear. It was the weight of recognition. The sword, the ground beneath them, even the twisting constellations above—they all pulsed in some ancient harmony with the blood in his veins. He felt as though he were walking into a place that remembered him, even if he had no name for it.
Behind him, Mira moved more slowly. The young girl's expression had shifted. The terror that had once clung to her like mist had been replaced with something else—something heavier. Wonder. Apprehension. A kind of dawning awe that made her steps tentative and reverent. She did not speak. Her eyes were trained downward, watching each root and patch of moss as if they might shift or speak at any moment.
Her pendant—still clutched in her small hand, pressed close to her chest—pulsed with faint jade light in a rhythm uncannily close to a heartbeat. Every now and then, it flared, just a little brighter, whenever her foot crossed a particularly strange patch of soil or passed beneath a cluster of hanging fungal spores that shimmered like stardust.
Seraphine brought up the rear. She walked with the poise of a predator, her shoulders high, back straight, and hands never far from her weapon. And yet, there was an unmistakable tension in her bearing—a stiffness in the way her eyes tracked every shadow, every sound. She did not blink often. The translucent sigil rotating around her wrist—a protection ward shaped like an unfurled lily—never dimmed. She trusted nothing here. Not even the trees.
They advanced deeper into the glade, where the forest became less forest and more something else entirely.
The terrain began to bend, subtly at first, then unmistakably. Tree trunks no longer grew straight—they curved, twisted in on themselves, gnarled into arcs that met overhead in high, vaulted patterns. They resembled ribs now, or perhaps the supports of a cathedral too large and too organic to be made by mortal hands. Moss took on an eerie phosphorescence, glowing a faint greenish-white that gave the grove the look of being lit from below.
Even the stars above were not constant. Every few minutes, they realigned — shifting subtly into new patterns, new constellations. Some were familiar in shape but distorted, like childhood memories twisted by time. Others were entirely alien, pinpricks of blue-white light in configurations that no chart in the libraries of Solace had ever recorded.
Eventually, Seraphine raised her hand. "Wait," she said, her voice a whisper that cut through the air with the precision of a blade.
They stopped.
A low hill rose ahead of them, framed by a sparse ring of ash-coloured trees. The incline was shallow, but its slope was scarred with slates of dark stone that caught the light like cracked mirrors. Atop it, jutting from the earth like the spine of a buried beast, stood a monolith. It was shaped like a fang—tall, narrow, and leaning slightly eastward. Its surface was half-hidden by ivy and rime, but even from a distance, they could make out the weathered remnants of carved symbols etched deep into its face.
"A sigil stone," Seraphine murmured, stepping closer. "One of the oldest kinds. From before the founding accords."
Lysander's jaw tightened. "Demonfolk?"
Seraphine shook her head slowly. "No. Older."
Lysander stepped forward, sword still drawn, and narrowed his eyes at the stone. The carvings weren't like anything he'd seen in any court or ruin. They didn't form words—they formed impressions. Emotions. Memories. His palm itched as he looked at them. The same place where the crest of the Hollow Crown had once seared into his flesh began to warm faintly, reacting in silent sympathy.
Then, without a word, Mira walked past them both.
"Mira—" Seraphine reached out, but the girl was already climbing the hill.
She moved with quiet determination, her boots crunching softly on the frost-hardened grass. Her pendant pulsed with increasing urgency. When she reached the monolith, she knelt—not like a child, but like a priestess—and laid her hand flat upon its stone face.
The moss recoiled.
The wind changed.
And the world... breathed.
A low, resonant hum rippled through the glade. The trees ceased their gentle rustling. The insects stilled. Even the sky seemed to hold its breath.
Then light.
It began at the stone—each glyph igniting with cold, clear flame that shimmered silver and blue, racing downward like frost across glass. From there, the magic spread—threads of light unfurling along the ground, curling in sigils around Mira's feet.
The pendant flared.
So did her skin.
Lines of script—formed of light, not ink—spooled across her arm, coiling around her wrist like bracelets woven of moonlight. Another strand wound up her neck and circled her throat. Her eyes closed, but her expression never flinched.
Then the monolith answered.
With a surge of power and silence, a dome of pale light burst outward — transparent and shimmering, enclosing the hilltop and everyone upon it. It rippled like water before stabilising into a seamless barrier. The temperature changed immediately. The ache of the cold lifted. The tension in the air bled away.
Inside the dome, there was peace.
Warmth.
Stillness.
Sanctuary.
Lysander stepped forward slowly, the frost fire on his blade flickering before dimming to embers. He touched the inside of the dome with two fingers and let out a quiet breath.
"That's not a wardstone," he said. "It's something more. A sanctuary seal. A royal one."
Seraphine moved to Mira's side. She knelt, but did not reach for the girl.
She placed her palm against the stone beside Mira's hand.
Nothing.
The monolith remained still, its light undimmed but unmoved.
Seraphine's shoulders tensed. Her voice was low.
"It doesn't respond to me."
Lysander's brow furrowed. "Because it's not keyed to your bloodline."
"No," Seraphine said. "Because it's already bound. To her."
Mira slowly opened her eyes. The light around her dimmed. "I saw it," she whispered. "In a dream. But I don't think it was mine."
Seraphine looked at her for a long moment.
"She's the key," Lysander said. "She always was."
The silence that followed was not heavy, but it was full. Full of realisation. Of memory. Of the unspoken understanding that the battle they had fought in the snow, in the glade, with the hounds and the Gravebinder—had not been the true beginning.
It had been the gate.
Now, they had stepped through.
Lysander knelt and began drawing lines into the frost-covered ground. Arcane symbols. Anchor points. Each one is linked to the next by etched threads of logic and memory.
"We rest here," he said. "This dome will hold until dawn. But it won't protect us forever."
Mira curled up beside the stone, exhaustion catching up to her. Already, her eyes were drooping.
Lysander looked to Seraphine. "And after?"
Seraphine's gaze turned skyward.
The stars had twisted again—now forming a spiral with a hollow centre.
"We go west," she said. "To the Vale of Shards."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because the Oracle waits there," she replied. "And I think she's been dreaming of Mira longer than any of us."