Chapter 47. The Bone Rebellion

By the time the acrid tendrils of smoke curled over Hollowkeep’s outer ridges, the ancient woods had already declared their allegiance. They did not breathe wind for the Council that morning. They did not bend branches to carry ivory‐towered edicts or rustle leaves in salute to crimson banners. No—on this fateful dawn, the forest lay motionless, as if cradling a secret. Its massive trunks stood like silent sentinels, bark rough and mottled with age, roots coiled beneath the loam like sleeping serpents. The air itself seemed to pause, listening as if to an unsung hymn too solemn for mortal lips.

Aeryn knelt at the crest of the ridge, her cloak heavy with dew and ash, faint wisps of mist drifting across its folds. The freshly painted crimson sigil on her chest still glistened wetly, its pigment catching the first pale fingers of sunlight that crept like cold ghosts through the canopy. All around her, the Thorn Pact gathered—not in the cramped precision of a soldiered formation,