The road to Thalwyn Mare was treacherous.
They moved through the lower ridgelands in silence, each step swallowed by the mist curling between the blackthorn trees. Rain had turned the path into a mire, their boots sinking into the mud with every step. A pale dawn broke above them, but it brought no warmth—only the kind of light that made shadows look like watchers.
Hester led now, her knowledge of the region carved from years spent mapping dead lands and reading signs others missed. Liran followed closely, his eyes never resting, hands near his blade. Ashra scouted the flanks, knives drawn, ears tuned to anything not belonging to the living.
Corwin trailed behind them all.
His mind still clung to the Whisperglass—to the words it had spoken.
"Three lie sleeping. One lies buried. One walks behind."
He repeated the line in his head like a litany. What did it mean? Verin had trusted riddles more than he trusted people. Every clue was a lock and a key all at once. But this riddle felt more like prophecy. And the way the Carrion had appeared so swiftly after—it couldn't be coincidence.
They paused at midday beneath the skeleton of a ruined watchtower. Hester laid out the new map etched by the Whisperglass, tracing the faint path that pointed to a mark labeled only as "Mare's Spine."
"It's a cliffside pass," she said. "North of Thalwyn proper. Abandoned since the Purge. If Verin marked it, there's something he didn't want the Order to find."
Ashra paced the edge of the clearing. "Or something he didn't want waking up."
Corwin knelt beside the map. "Either way, we have to get there before the Carrion."
Liran gave a sharp nod. "Then we'll need to move faster. No fires. Night marches. We take the canyon path and hope they don't expect us to risk it."
That night, they reached the edge of the Marewood—a twisted woodland where even the trees seemed to lean away from the moonlight. Fog clung to the bark in coils, and the deeper they went, the quieter the forest grew.
Too quiet.
Ashra spotted it first: the sigil etched into a standing stone near the path. It pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
"Carrion marker," she whispered.
"Fresh?" Liran asked.
"A day. Maybe less. They're close."
They made camp in a hollow beneath a fallen tree, sheltered from the trail. Corwin didn't sleep. None of them did, not really. Each kept watch in tense shifts, the silence between them weighted with the knowledge that the game had changed.
The Carrion were no longer waiting for them to stumble.
They were chasing them directly.
Near dawn, Corwin sat up, heart pounding. A dream—or something more—had woken him.
In the darkness, he saw movement.
A shape.
A cloaked figure standing just beyond the treeline, not approaching, not retreating. Watching. Silent. Unmoving.
He reached for his satchel, but when he looked again, the figure was gone.
He rose quietly and walked to the edge of camp. There, etched into the frost-laced bark of a tree, was a mark he hadn't seen before.
A circle split by a single vertical line.
Not Carrion. Something older.
He touched it.
And heard a voice—no louder than breath—whisper in his ear:
"The buried one remembers you."
He stumbled back, chest heaving. His shout woke the others.
They surrounded him quickly, but he could only point. The mark had vanished.
Ashra's voice was cold. "We need to reach the Spine. Now."
And as dawn finally crept over the eastern rise, Corwin couldn't shake the feeling that something was beginning to stir beneath the soil of the world.
Something that knew his name.