Chapter 11. Ashfall Whispers

After war, the world teaches you to hear only in loud things—horns, orders, the sharp crack of commands, the scream that rises above all others because it is your own.

But it was a small sound that found me: a drip.

In the shattered grove beneath the eastern tower, sap bled from a moon-ash tree. It slid in slow, silver threads, shining like breath caught in winter air. The trunk had split where something—not blade, not claw—had struck it. The surrounding ground was a wasteland of black ash, scorched down to root and stone. Old Vesper curses leave their own aftertaste in the air: burned coins, bitter and metallic enough to sting the tongue.

I stepped closer, boots sinking into the softened crust of the earth.

There, in the ash, a single track pressed as clean as a written sentence: the print of a paw. Too small to belong to any warbeast. Too deliberate to belong to something human.

I crouched, leaning my weight onto my heels. The brand stirred, faint as