Chapter 39. The Blood That Stays

Hollowridge did not rest.

Even after the last war cry faded and the ash settled into the stone, the mountain refused to sleep. Wolves moved through the halls like ghosts unsure if they’d survived or merely passed into something stranger. Fires burned low in the old hearths. Blades were cleaned, not sheathed. And the names of the dead were etched into the inner walls—one by one—until the stone ran out of space.

Seraya stood in the Hall of Remembrance, her fingers tracing the last name carved into the far wall.

Kae, of the Redroot Line.

He’d lived. But barely.

Now he slept in the healer’s den, wrapped in furs too big for his frame, one arm bandaged, one eye swollen shut. When she’d visited that morning, he hadn’t spoken. He only looked at her with that quiet understanding some children carried—like they’d seen more than