The road from Arkanis wound through days of dust and wind before the gray horizon broke into color. Leto, capital of Ashkara, rose from the valley like a carved jewel—its walls veined with pale marble, its roofs painted in dyes brighter than any Diana had seen since leaving the heartland.
Musicians sat in the city gates, plucking lyres and flutes as merchants passed. Caravans rolled in, their carts draped with painted ceramics and woven tapestries dyed with indigo and saffron. Everywhere she looked, artisans bent to their work—hammering bronze, carving stone, stringing beads of colored glass.
Leto was known for this: a city of arts and crafts, where beauty was more prized than coin, and even the poorest wore a brooch or armband hammered by a local smith. Murals adorned the outer walls, scenes of gods and heroes, bright against the pale stone as though to ward off the ash that forever blew in from the east.
Yet beneath the color, Diana felt it: a hush, subtle but persistent.
Children darted in the streets, but their play fell quiet whenever the wind carried a sour hint of smoke from the Ashen Coast. Old women pressed charms into the hands of passersby, muttering protective phrases. The superstition was not as heavy here as in the Marches province, but it lingered in corners—in the way merchants spat over their shoulders before counting coin, or how innkeepers scratched warding symbols above their doors after dark.
Alaric reined in beside her as they entered the central square, where fountains gushed clear water and a bronze statue of Leto's founder gleamed.
"It doesn't look starving," he said cautiously.
"No," Diana murmured. Her eyes swept the stalls piled high with painted pottery and jewel-inlaid knives. "It hides its hunger well. But look closer. See how many wares are for display only? They keep the color bright so no one sees the grain stores growing empty."
A troop of civic guards saluted as she passed, their armor polished, their smiles too fixed. The provincial governor's palace loomed ahead, its doors flanked by pillars carved into spirals of ivy.
Diana dismounted, the eyes of the city upon her. Artists, craftsmen, and merchants leaned from doorways, pausing mid-hammer or mid-paint, whispering her name. She was the Emperor's daughter, the voice in the senate who spoke of Ashkara when others would not. Here, she was hope—or a threat, depending on who listened.
She squared her shoulders. Whatever the senate ignored, whatever shadows crawled the coast, she would find it here. In the city of Leto, amidst its bright colors and hushed superstition, the truth was waiting.
****
Diana chose the base of her operations herself. It sat two streets from the governor's palace—no closer than prudence allowed, no farther than a courteous bow. Once a weaver's guildhall, its front room still smelled faintly of linen and oil; its back courtyard opened on an alley that ran like a rib beside the palace wall.
From the upper window, you could see the governor's gate, the sweep of the guard parade, and, on a clear day, the first sliver of the Ashen Coast horizon. Its roof tiles were patched, but the foundation was solid; for a base of operations, it was honest and anonymous.
She walked the rooms with Alaric at her shoulder, fingers on tape and thread, measuring where maps would hang and where the lamplights should be placed to cast useful shadows. By the time the night had slipped its last blue into black, a dozen curtained windows had become a small, purposeful war room: a table scarred with chart-ink, a brass lamp whose flame never quite went out, a pegboard of string and pins tracing the province in red—roads, coves, vanished villages, the Ashen Fields like a jagged scar.
A loose floorboard near the hearth hid a narrow compartment for folded papers and the governor's seal, should anyone foolish enough to leave one unattended. The weaver's loom remained, its warp threads co-opted into a net of messages and messenger names—Diana liked the image: information like a woven fabric, strong if the strands held.
She assigned her people with the brevity of a captain and the weight of a woman who knew what she could not wait for.
"Mira goes inside," she said. "She will be a handmaid first, then a chambermaid. She knows palace work. She is quiet and clever; she will learn the governor's schedule, the servants' routes, and where the visiting merchants leave their goods. If the palace leaks—money, messages, a guest from Mare Thalassion—Mira will find it."
Alaric inclined his head. "Mira of the Ashen Veil is ready, my lady. She has moved through houses like a shadow before."
Mira was shorter than Diana had expected: a spare thing with a face that closed politely around whatever she needed to hide. Diana watched her fold her cloak the way one would fold a secret. The woman's fingers were banded where she had once bound rope; she had been a stable hand, then a laundress, then something between trades, learning how to move where people did not look. Diana pressed a coin and a scrap of cloth into her palm—a small blessing, no grand speech. Mira tucked them away like lit tinder.
"And Eudoros," Diana continued, turning to the other frame of her plan. "He'll take the streets. He knows their tongues."
Eudoros, the beggar with one good eye and a surgeon's memory for faces, had been less surprising. He arrived at the base before dusk as if he belonged there—ragged but clean, a bundle of wrapped bread tucked under his arm as if to pay for the wine. He sat at the table and unfolded a scrap of map Diana gave him, his thumb tracing the alleys.
"The Raghand boys listen to me," he said, and it was not a boast so much as a fact. "They've never had a proper coin to buy a lookout. Give them coin and a reason, and they will do more than look." He brought up names as if pulling threads from a basket: Kest, who ran the east wharf; Old Harl, who ran interference in the market; the Syra twins' brother, who ran the boat crews. He knew where the gangs tucked their women, where the pickpockets stashed their knives. He knew their injuries and their debts. He could, with the right price and a promise of protection, place every cutpurse under a single thumb.
Diana watched him speak and imagined the city like a loom of people, each knot a choice. "Control the docks," she said. "Control the docks and you control the arrivals. If someone brings a boat under Thalassion colors, I want to know the name on the manifest before the tide turns."
Eudoros grinned like a man who had been offered a table when he only expected crumbs. "I'll have them rowing by dawn," he promised.
They set the rules plainly: no needless blood, no theatrics. Information, not vendetta. Once the underworld understood whose coin paid for their silence—and their loyalty—it would be easier to bend them to watching reefs, boats, and any strangers who came in off the Inner Sea. Diana did not pretend she trusted thieves; she trusted that hunger could be redirected as cleanly as a river if the banks were held firm.
Mira's infiltration was quieter than any proclamation. On her first night, she entered the palace's servants' wing with a bundle of linens: a lowly hand among many, eyes down, inside pocket sewn with a tiny mirror that would give her sight around corners. Diana watched her go from the upper landing, every muscle taut, and thought of the senator's veiled words in the Curia—the warning and the thin threat—and answered them with motion rather than rage.
The first report came three nights later.
Mira returned at dawn, the hem of her apron stained with oil and shadow-mud. She spoke in fragments, giving Diana only what the house needed first.
"The governor receives a trader from the Inner Sea on the third day of each market week," she said, laying a small scrap of ribbon on the table—navy thread, knot stitched in a manner common to Mare Thalassion sailors. "Two men in gilded masks ate in a private antechamber. They left folded papers in the governor's hand. There was a servant with a ring like a sea wave—he does not belong to the palace. I saw him in the docks a fortnight ago, selling fish and silk."
Diana read the ribbon without surprise; the lamplight showed its knot like an accusation. Her fingers moved already, pinning another thread to the map.
Eudoros's first move was less delicate but no less effective. At dusk, he met with Kest beneath the east wharf, spilling a stolen flagon of wine and a handful of coins across the barrel between them. He spoke of hunger—of how the Raghand boys had been left to rot while master smugglers took the silver. He spoke then of Diana's coin and of a promise to fix the boys' debts if Kest would promise one thing: watch the tides and report any Thalassion-marked ships.
Kest took the coin. He took the promise. He spat into the river and slapped the table with a palm as if swearing on the water itself. By morning, the docks hummed differently. Men who had once traded knives for oysters were now tied to a new ledge of purpose: watch the reefs; count the sails; note the flags; learn the faces of the captains who walked ashore.
Diana did not sleep much those first nights. The base smelled of ink and bread; the maps on the table were threaded with pins that grew into a constellation she could follow. Alaric set patrols that moved like whispers through the lanes; Claudia's needlewomen carried gossip as bait; Justinian fed paper trails into the right hands.
Each person did a narrow task and kept their eyes down. The city looked unchanged to any casual observer—artisans hammered, children played, murals still gleamed—but beneath the ordinary a new constellation of watchfulness had become visible to those who knew how to look.
****
Mira laid the ribbon on the table. The navy thread caught the lamplight, its knot unmistakable—a sailor's weave used by Mare Thalassion crews. Diana's gaze lingered on it, her hand hovering just above the cloth as if the thread itself hummed with meaning.
She took it at last, pinned it beside the Ashen Coast on her map, and tapped the spot twice with her nail. The sound was sharp, like a needle biting into fabric.
Alaric stood behind her shoulder, arms folded across his chest. "So the governor dines with masked traders from across the sea." His voice was grim. "Then the answer is plain enough. Mare Thalassion feeds the raids."
Diana shook her head slowly, her eyes still fixed on the spreading red pins across Ashkara's coast. "It looks plain," she murmured, "but the threads don't weave clean."
Alaric frowned. "You doubt it?"
Her jaw tightened. "No—I believe the Mare profit from this, perhaps even guide it. Their pirates have plagued our shores for a hundred years, and the governor's dealings reek of complicity. But…" She reached across the table, fingers tracing the string that marked each vanished village, her touch lingering on the spaces between. "My gut says they are only part of the pattern. The fires, the silence, the people gone without a cry—those are not Mare Thalassion's way. They trade in fear, not in ghosts."
She straightened, eyes sharp in the lamplight, the reflection of the map burning in them. "The evidence points to them, yes. The history makes it easy to blame them, yes. But something else is hidden in the weave."
Alaric's silence stretched, his frown deepening. At last, he said quietly, "Then we hunt for the hand behind the hand."
Diana tapped the pinned ribbon once more, harder this time.
"Exactly."
Diana's voice cut through the lamplight like a drawn blade. She turned from the map to Mira, who stood with her apron still smudged from the palace kitchens.
"When is the governor's next meeting with these traders?" Diana asked.
Mira hesitated, eyes flicking to the ribbon pinned on the map as though it might whisper the answer for her. She wrung the edge of her apron between her fingers before replying. "There's no fixed hour, my Lady. From what I've gathered, their visits fall once every fortnight, but…" She lifted her gaze, steady now. "There are days they come twice in a week. Even daily, when the governor pleases."
Diana exhaled, a low sound that was closer to a hiss than a sigh. She stepped back to the map, her finger tracing the jagged line of the Ashen Coast before stopping at the pinned ribbon.
"A pattern meant to look like no pattern at all," she murmured. Her nail tapped the ribbon once, sharp against the parchment. "Enough to confuse even the palace clerks. Enough to make it seem like chance, as though he merely entertains passing merchants."
Her hand clenched into a fist, knuckles whitening against the map's surface. "Merchants, dressed as pirates. Pirates, who are enemies of the Imperium. And yet welcomed through the governor's gate."
She looked up sharply, her eyes hard with resolve. "That governor isn't careless, Mira. He's careful. Too careful. He's hiding in plain sight."
Alaric shifted beside the window, his hand brushing the hilt of his sword. "Sketchy doesn't begin to cover it," he muttered. "If his loyalties are bent toward Mare Thalassion, he's not just corrupt—he's a traitor."
Diana's gaze lingered on the map a moment longer. The ribbons and pins seemed to her like threads of a loom—interwoven, tangled, but not yet whole. And somewhere in that weave was the truth she meant to drag into daylight.
"I think it's time we head out to the coast."
Diana's words hung in the lamplight, steady and deliberate. She brushed her fingertips across the pinned ribbon on the map, then let her hand fall away as if dismissing the governor's games for now. "Keep an eye on his movements, Mira. Quietly. No sudden shifts, no shadows that linger too long. If he suspects we're watching, we lose him."
Mira bowed her head, her face unreadable in the glow.
"Tomorrow," Diana continued, turning toward the tall window where the garden shadows pooled, "we ride for the coast, Alaric."
"Yes, my lady," came the answer in unison, Alaric's low voice overlapped by Mira's softer one.
The room fell quiet after they left. Diana doused one lamp, then another, until only a single flame remained, swaying inside its glass cage. She sat cross-legged before it, resting her palms on her knees, her cloak falling around her like a red tide.
She breathed slowly, letting the clamor of the city fall away until she could hear only her pulse, steady as a drumbeat. The stillness stirred something deeper—threads of power that wove through her blood and marrow, through the very air that pressed against the shutters.
The wind answered first. A faint stir in the rafters, though the night outside was calm. The flame bent toward her as though bowing. Her lineage called, and she met it, opening herself to the sovereignty that ran through the Arkanis line. The wind of Zeus' mystery—a birthright that few of her kin awakened to, and fewer still could master.
She did not see herself as they did in the senate chambers: another daughter among a hundred, useful only for a marriage pact or a polite smile. No. She had heard the call of the storm in her veins, felt the crown of air and thunder hovering just beyond reach.
Her father once bore the same strength. She remembered him as a younger man, his voice carrying like thunder, his presence filling the halls of the palace. But greed had hollowed him, indulgence dulled his edge. Now the senate ruled where he should, fattening themselves while the empire bled.
Her elder brothers and sisters clamored to wear the diadem, each parading their ambition like a standard, yet none had the will to wield it. Diana saw only vanity and hunger in their eyes. Not one of them would stand against what loomed beyond the Imperium's borders.
She closed her eyes, the lamp's flame reflected on her lids as if she carried it inside. She was not blind. A shadow was moving, darker than Mare Thalassion's fleets, heavier than Dionian raids. The kind of shadow that toppled dynasties.
Her breath steadied. Her hands tightened on her knees until her nails left half-moons in the fabric of her robe.
If the empire must have an heir, it will not be the ones who feasts while the people starve.
The wind stirred again, sharper this time, rattling the shutters. Diana's lips curved into the faintest of smiles.
"I will be Empress," she whispered to the quiet room. "And I will face what comes."
****
The first light of dawn crept over the tiled roofs of Leto, turning the whitewashed walls and painted mosaics into muted shades of gold. The city was only just waking—bakers lighting their ovens, artisans unlatching their shutters, children chasing each other through the alleys with sleep still in their eyes.
At the edge of the governor's district, horses stamped in the chill. Their breath steamed in the half-light, reins jingling softly as Diana approached in her travel cloak. Alaric was already mounted, the red plume of his helm dulled beneath a plain hood. Around him, a handful of her hand-picked guards sat their saddles, cloaks drawn, blades bound in leather to muffle the sound. They looked more like a merchant's escort than the daughter of the Emperor's retinue—just as Diana intended.
She paused in the courtyard, looking once over her shoulder toward the governor's palace. Its columns stood tall and gilded in the early sun, but its windows were shuttered tight. Even from here, she imagined the governor still at his cups, his conspiracies carried out while the city still dreamed. Her jaw tightened.
Alaric guided his horse closer. "The west road is clear. If we ride swiftly, we'll reach the coastal villages before nightfall."
Diana mounted without a word, her cloak falling across her lap. The horse shifted beneath her, eager to move. She drew in the morning air—cold, sharp, carrying the faintest tang of ash even here in the capital.
The gates opened with a groan, and the company moved out. They wound through Leto's narrow streets, past potters already at their wheels, past painters hanging their works on balconies, past musicians plucking strings for the morning market. People paused to watch as the small column passed—whispers following Diana like shadows. Some bowed their heads, others only stared, measuring her against the weight of her lineage.
When they reached the city's edge, the paved road stretched westward, climbing the low ridges toward the scar of the Ashen Fields. Beyond those ridges, the coast waited.
Diana reined in at the top of the rise for a moment. From here, she could see the sea faintly in the distance, a dark line on the horizon. Her fate-sense stirred again—a tightness in her chest, as if the air itself leaned forward in warning.
She looked to Alaric. "Let's ride."
The horses broke into a steady canter, hooves drumming the road as the city of Leto dwindled behind them. The wind tugged at Diana's hood, carrying the smell of salt and smoke. Ahead, the Ashen Coast waited, and with it the truth she meant to seize.
The road west narrowed as the land began to change. The hills fell away, giving rise to a broad expanse of earth that seemed permanently scarred—the outer fringes of the Ashen Fields.
The soil was pale gray, almost white in places, as if fire had scoured it clean centuries ago and nothing had dared to grow since. A dry wind whipped across the plain, carrying fine ash that stung the eyes and settled on cloaks like a veil. The horses snorted and tossed their heads, uneasy.
Diana drew her hood tighter, her gaze sweeping the horizon. Here and there, the bones of old trees jutted from the earth like blackened fingers. Pillars of stone stood half-buried, remnants of shrines or homesteads long reduced to rubble. Some bore faint carvings—symbols worn smooth by time but still recognizable as warding marks, etched in desperation during the Heroic Age when the Imperium had burned its own lands to halt the Dionian advance.
Alaric reined in beside her, his face grim beneath his hood. "I hate this place. Nothing stirs, not even birds. It's as if the land itself remembers."
"It does remember," Diana said quietly. Her fingers brushed the air as if she could feel the residue woven into the wind. "The ash is not just soil. It's memory. Fire never dies here—it only sleeps."
The guards kept silent, though one muttered a prayer under his breath when they passed a standing stone marked with old runes. Diana noticed and said nothing. Even she felt the weight pressing down here, the sense that unseen eyes lingered just beyond the ridges.
The road curved at last, leading them out of the worst of the desolation. The ash thinned, giving way to scrub grass and low, twisted trees. The air lost its acrid tang and carried salt instead—the sea was near.
By late afternoon, rooftops appeared on the horizon: a cluster of clay and thatch huts nestled in a small cove. Nets hung drying on wooden racks, their cords glinting with salt. Smoke curled from a few chimneys, the first true sign of life since they had left Leto.
The guards relaxed slightly, their mounts quickening at the scent of food cooking on the wind.
Alaric gestured ahead. "Seaward. Not touched, at least from what I can see."
Diana studied the village as they approached. The people here still moved about their work—women gutting fish at the shore, children chasing gulls, men repairing nets. No burned homes, no unnatural silence. Yet even here, she sensed a subtle caution. Faces turned quickly as her company passed, eyes lingering a heartbeat too long. The way villagers lowered their voices suggested unease; they dared not speak.
"This one still stands," Diana said softly as they rode down into the cove. "But it already feels the shadow of what lies further down the coast."
They arrived at what was an inn, a tall building with not many people inside. The only ones were those by the bar, those who were having their daily drink before dusk arrived. Diana and her men chose a table with a little bit of distance, but close enough that she had enough of a view of the place.
The people inside gave her company a weird look. It was not every day they saw a mercenary group in their villages. What they normally dealt with were Pirates of the Mare Thalassion.
"....Did you hear what happened to Perithia?" One of the men said.
"I hear the place is nothing but a ghost village now," Another said, chugging his beer.
"A lot of villages have ended up like Perithia, but I never once thought that place would be the one to end up like the others."
"They were the richest among the coastal villages,"
They came upon the village inn near the heart of the cove—a tall, timber-framed building that leaned slightly toward the sea, as though the salt wind had pushed against it for generations. Its sign, a carved dolphin faded to gray, creaked overhead in the breeze.
Inside, the air was heavy with smoke and brine. A single hearth burned low, giving off more shadow than heat. Only a handful of patrons lingered—fishermen with weathered faces, their boots caked with dried salt, and two old men hunched by the bar, taking slow pulls from clay mugs. This was no bustling tavern, only a place for weary laborers to drink before dusk and the sea's chill settled in.
Diana and her men drew a pause in the room as they entered. Cloaked and armored, they stood out at once. The innkeeper's hand stilled mid-polish on a mug, and one fisherman muttered something under his breath. It wasn't every day that strangers came to these villages, much less a small, disciplined company that looked more like soldiers than wanderers. Their usual visitors wore the rags and blades of Mare Thalassion pirates, not the crested steel of the Imperium.
Diana let the silence hang a moment before leading her men to a table near the back wall. It offered distance enough to keep their words private, but close enough for her to take in the whole room with a single glance. She pulled her hood back, her face revealed but composed, and rested her gloves on the table. The guards sat quietly, their presence a weight that made the locals return, awkwardly, to their drinks.
It wasn't long before voices carried again through the dim light.
"...Did you hear what happened to Perithia?" one of the old men asked, his voice rough as sand. He hunched over his mug, eyes darting as if afraid the name itself might summon something.
Another man, broader and red-faced from drink, lifted his cup and swallowed deep before answering. "I hear it's nothing but a ghost village now." He wiped the foam from his beard with the back of his hand. "Not a soul left, not even the dogs."
The inn grew still at the word ghost. A fisherman by the door shifted uncomfortably, spitting on the floor as though to ward off evil.
"A lot of villages have ended up like Perithia," the first man muttered, staring into his mug. "But I never thought that place would fall. Not Perithia."
"They were the richest along the coast," another chimed in from his stool, his voice lower. "Good nets, strong boats, stores filled for winter. If even they can vanish..." He trailed off, shaking his head.
The fire cracked softly in the hearth. No one finished his thought.
Diana sat perfectly still, her hands folded lightly on the table, her posture calm though her pulse quickened. The men thought they whispered in the privacy of ale and smoke, but she heard every word as clearly as if they had spoken beside her ear.
The wind was her ally. She had summoned it quietly, without gesture, coaxing the draft that crept through the warped shutters to bend toward her. Their voices carried on it, threads of sound woven into her senses. Not only in the inn—beyond its timber walls, the wind swept the alleys and docks, snatching fragments of gossip: women muttering of empty nets, children repeating tales of fires in the night, old men cursing the sea under their breath.
It was a dangerous indulgence. The wind did not give freely—it demanded a toll. Diana felt it in her bones already, the drain that tugged at her limbs. That was why she had spent the previous night in meditation, aligning herself, resonating with the current of her bloodline, storing strength for this moment. Without that preparation, the strain would have left her weakened, a husk among her men.
Now, though, she was equipped. Every whisper, every rumor, every tremor of fear in Kolma was hers to sift and weigh.
"If only the Ashborn was here in Ashkara," one of the fishermen muttered into his mug. His voice was low, but it carried in the quiet room.
Another man frowned, leaning in. "Ashborn? Who's that?"
The first smirked faintly, the kind of smile men wear when they know they have a tale worth telling. "You haven't heard the rumors? Gods, you really must spend all your time gutting fish. Word came down from the Iron March." He lowered his voice, though not enough to hide the note of excitement. "The Ashborn's a Curseborn mercenary. Hunts daimons out on the Ashen Fields. Hunts them and kills them."
The word Curseborn drew a ripple through the room. One of the old men at the bar shifted uneasily, making a sign against evil with two fingers. Another spat on the floor, muttering a prayer under his breath.
"A Curseborn mercenary," the second man repeated, half incredulous, half intrigued. He leaned closer. "And folk trust him?"
"Trust him?" The storyteller chuckled, a dry rasp. "No. But they pay him. That's the part that matters. They say he's part of a company that deals only with daimons—nothing else. No bandits, no pirates, no caravans. Just daimons." He thumped the table with his fist for emphasis. "And when he comes, the fires on the Fields burn low. Even the shadows scatter."
The hearth cracked loudly, the only sound for a long moment. Faces around the room tightened—men pretending not to listen now stared openly, eyes hungry for the thought of a blade turned against the horrors of the ash.
Diana watched from her table, her expression unreadable beneath the hood's shadow. Ashborn. A name carried on whispers and ale, yet weighted with fear and hope alike. She felt the pull of it in the air, like a new thread tugging at the edges of fate.
When their meal was done, she rose, nodded once to the innkeeper, and led her company upstairs. They moved into the rooms they had arranged quietly, the mutters of the villagers following them up the stair. The night passed in stillness.
Morning came with gull cries and the smell of fish-salted air. Diana and Alaric stepped out into the narrow lanes, the guards keeping their distance. She wanted her eyes unclouded by the weight of armed men. The village was alive in its small rhythms—nets stretched out to dry, pottery cooling in kilns, children chasing each other through the tide-pools. Yet beneath it all, she sensed something out of place.
It did not take long to find it.
At the edge of the market square, a group of strangers lingered near the shrine stone, their cloaks marked with faint sigils that most would dismiss as decoration. Their voices were hushed, their hands clasped in ritual postures. The villagers gave them wide berth, not out of fear, but with the wary respect reserved for forces best left alone.
Alaric leaned close. "Not pirates. Not locals either."
"No," Diana murmured. "A cult."
She had seen them before, in the capital and beyond. Mystery cults—organizations that had risen in the centuries after the gods vanished, claiming scraps of divine knowledge, binding themselves in secrecy. They were the spine of spiritual life now: half-priesthood, half-brotherhood, part relic, part invention. Every cult guarded its mysteries jealously, each initiation a trial of endurance or faith. To be accepted was to become a Mystai, one who held sacred truths and swore never to reveal them.
Many Mystiques in the world carried cult brands on their souls, and many still did the cult's bidding long after leaving their initiation. A Mystai was bound, shaped by secrecy.
Diana was not.
She was a Mystique—her lineage had awakened in her the sovereignty of wind—but she had never bent knee to any cult, not even the Imperial one in Arkanis where her brothers and sisters paraded their half-borrowed mysteries as marks of power. She bore no oath-chains. Her strength was her own.
Now she watched the cloaked figures in Kolma with narrowed eyes, the wind curling around her shoulders like a restless hound. "The governor entertains pirates," she murmured, "but the cults hunt further. If they're here…" She let the thought trail, the threads already knotting together in her mind.
Alaric rested a hand on his sword hilt. "Then whatever we've stepped into runs deeper than raids and burned villages."
Diana said nothing at first. She only watched as the cloaked figures drifted down the narrow lane, their hoods drawn low, their garments stitched with faint sigils that caught the morning light like ghost-threads. The villagers stepped aside as they passed, bowing their heads or pretending to be busy with their hands filled with nets and baskets. Dust swirled in their wake, stirred by Diana's ever-present wind.
The loom of fate pulled tight within her chest, a subtle pressure, like a string drawn taut. She had learned long ago to trust that pull. Without a word, she stepped after the strangers, her cloak brushing against the cobbles. Alaric moved in beside her, his gauntleted hand hovering near the hilt of his sword, though his eyes stayed wary rather than hostile.
They trailed the group through the village and out along a side path, the road narrowing between half-collapsed stone walls. The cloaked figures moved with quiet purpose, never glancing behind them, as though they knew the weight of secrecy would shield them from curious eyes.
The path ended at a building set apart from the rest of the village—a squat hall of dark stone, its windows shuttered, its roof blackened by soot. Above the heavy door hung a wrought-iron emblem: an anvil, hammered deep and dark into the signboard.
Alaric's eyes narrowed. "The Iron Guild," he muttered. His voice carried a note of distaste. "So it's not just any cult. A smith-cult, sworn to Hephaestus mysteries."
The cloaked figures slipped inside, one by one, their hands brushing the anvil symbol as they entered. The door shut behind them with a thud.
Diana stood in silence, her gaze lingering on the soot-stained walls. The air here felt thicker, heavy with the residue of fire and forge. She could almost hear hammers striking in some hidden chamber, each blow ringing faintly in the marrow of her bones.
At last, she drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders. "We're not going in."
Alaric turned to her, his brow furrowed. "You'd leave it? With proof in front of us?"
"No," she said evenly, her voice firm but low. "Not leave it. Not yet. A forge hides its secrets deep, Alaric. If we walk in now, all we'll see is smoke and fire. What I want lies further down the coast." She turned her head toward the horizon, where the sea glimmered faintly beyond the ridges. "Perithia. That is where the answers wait."
Alaric studied her for a heartbeat, then inclined his head. "Very well, my lady."
They turned from the soot-stained hall, the wind carrying the faint metallic tang of iron on their backs as they walked back toward the village. Diana did not look behind her. She did not need to. The fate-thread tugging at her chest had already shifted its pull—southward, to where Perithia lay silent.