Chapter 66. Ashfall, Answer or Ash

We left Veilgrove under a sky that hadn’t decided if it would rain. Small. Fast. No banners, no letters. The Spine rode wrapped against my back, patient as a hawk under a hood. Leaf trotted in an eager crescent from heel to front and back again, all tendon and opinion. The Veil-cuff sat cool on my wrist—pleased with caution, ready to scald if I reached for doors I couldn’t pay for.

Syra took point. Neris walked where shadows went to sharpen. Orla kept the pace steady enough for thoughts to catch up. Kael matched me without trying. We didn’t talk about Whitefall or the way his breath had hitched once in the dark. We gave the morning our shoulders and let it pull.

By midday the road forgot it was a road. We moved through scrub and ash brush, the land as spare as a monk’s diet. Every mile a new message: a totem charred to the post; a crescent fang smeared on a stone with something that had been red and wasn’t anymore; a string of bones rattling from a burnt-larch limb. Warn