Chapter 43. The Nameless Map

The dream came before the pain.

Aria didn’t remember falling asleep. The fire in the makeshift camp was still burning low, the wind hadn’t yet shifted, and Nairon had taken first watch. Yet, without warning, she was no longer on the cold dirt beneath her cloak.

She stood in a hall of black marble, open to the sky, though no stars burned above. The columns bent backward like reaching fingers. At the center of the floor: a map. Not on parchment, not carved—woven directly into the stone like veins beneath skin.

It moved.

She knelt.

The map pulsed faintly, flickering shapes appearing and vanishing—mountains that rose and fell in seconds, rivers that curved then dried, cities with names she almost remembered but couldn’t pronounce.

In the center of it all, a single mark.

A circle with teeth.

She reached toward it, and the map recoiled.

Not in fear.

In warning.

She woke with blood on her lips.

Not hers.

Nairon s