Chapter 29. Thornroot Rising

They reached Thornroot at dusk, when the sky bled violet and gold into the horizon. The old border fort lay before them like a fallen giant—its ribs of stone cracked open, half-sunken into the loamy forest floor. Moss crawled over mortar seams in thick, emerald blankets, while brambles curled through shattered gateposts like blackened veins squeezing a dying heart. No birdsong stirred this air. No wolf howled. Even the wind seemed to pause at the ramparts, as if the forest itself hesitated, unsure whether to enfold these intruders or hurl them back into the dark beyond.

Aeryn stood at the threshold, her cloak weighed down by days of marching through mud-slick trails and root-tangled thickets. Each breath billowed like a pale ghost into the gathering gloom. Behind her, the Kin fanned out in ragged formation—shoulders slumped beneath stains of sweat and dust, wounds half-healed but watched over by eyes bright with something fiercer than hope: a hard certainty that even ruin was