Chapter 43. Rise of the Forgotten

The first arrived in twos and threes—skeletal orphans slipping out of the forest’s dark breath, bare of shoes, clinging to frayed rags and names they’d whispered so often they feared even their own voices would betray them. They came under a moonless sky, drawn not by heralds’ horns but by rumors carried on the wind, ghosts of hope they dared to chase. Behind them, wolveshowled the promise of sanctuary.

Soon the rogues followed. They traveled in ragged knots of five or ten, bodies gaunt and scarred, their hair tangled like brambles, eyes missing or blind with old wounds. Clanmarks had been burned from their skin; in their place were exile’s tattoos—thorned crowns and fractured moons scorched onto shoulders and thighs. They did not bow when they crested the ridge above Thornroot. They merely halted, chests heaving, and claimed the earth with their silence.

By the seventh dawn, the settlement’s trenches and palisades teemed with hundreds of them.

At every hour of the