The fog rolled in thick that night, curling like pale fingers around the jagged stones and sparse trees clinging to the cliffs.
The full moon hung enormous and low above the sea, its light bleeding through the haze and casting everything in an eerie, silver glow. The wind whispered through the cracks of the rocks, hollow and restless, as though something unseen breathed just beneath the mountain's surface.
Kai hadn't even tried to sleep.
He'd slept plenty alongside Vepice during the trip to the mountains just to make sure he could remain alert and aware for however long he needed to once he entered Ebonbrand's resting place.
He sat cross-legged atop the same rock spire he'd claimed earlier, his cloak wrapped tight against the chill. His mana sight traced the horizon and the black valleys below, the world appearing to him as a web of faintly pulsing threads.
And there, out in the shifting fog, he could see them. Faint signatures, moving.
