Chapter 19. The Hunger of Names

The morning sun had crept above the horizon before the last tendrils of frost finally loosened their grip. Yet the cold itself lingered stubbornly—as if it were less a temperature and more an accusation pressed into every crevice of the courtyard. It was not in the thin air alone but in the silent pauses between distant voices, in the hollow places where warmth ought to have pooled. Aeryn stood at the threshold of the outer hall, fingertips grazing the splintered wood of the doorframe, her gaze fixed not on the grey stones underfoot but on the gnarled stump at the courtyard’s heart.

At first glance, the stump had not shifted. Its height and silhouette remained familiar. But the bark that once sagged with rot now sat taut and dry, revealing a core as dense and dark as aged iron—scar tissue from some wound that had finally sealed. Around its twisted roots the earth bulged subtly, as though something beneath had pressed upward in the night, forcing the ground to proof against uns