"Swear you'll avenge my mother," she pressed, swallowing the quake in her voice. "Swear you'll end what started beneath this valley."
Around them, the scouts moved in slow silhouettes: one securing a tent flap against the wind, another murmuring over the morning cook-fire, the youngest sharpening a blade that would probably never be sharp enough to answer what lay beneath the fissures. Yet every head angled subtly, every ear tuned. Even Korin's lantern seemed to lean closer.
Draven's jaw set. Not refusal—assessment. He looked past Sylvanna to the split horizon, where the frost-crusted peaks speared the pale sun. Snow flurries sifted from a slate-grey sky, spiralling like parchment scraps torn from an unreadable book. He inhaled once, a soundless measure of the dawn's thin air, then exhaled words older than most kingdoms.
"Eva'rel lun thar."
