The wind sharpened as they left the Marewood.
By mid-morning, the trees gave way to highland scrub and jagged ridges. The trail thinned to a narrow path carved into the cliff's edge, overlooking mist-filled ravines below. Far ahead, the path curled around the rock face and vanished into the cloudbank. Mare's Spine lay just beyond.
But none of them spoke of the destination.
They were still thinking about the mark Corwin had seen.
Ashra scouted ahead while Hester pored over a fragment of old scripture she'd copied in the workshop weeks ago—one that described glyphs from the Alkahest Archive. Liran remained close to Corwin, watchful, quiet.
"Describe it again," Hester said finally. "The symbol."
Corwin knelt, sketching it into the frost-hardened soil with a stick: a circle, bisected by a single vertical line.
She frowned. "It's not alchemical. Not modern, anyway. This might predate the guilds."
Liran crossed his arms. "Older than the guilds? That's pre-Dawn Era. You think someone's been marking trees with a language older than civilization?"
"No," Hester said softly. "Not someone. Something."
Corwin stared at the mark. The whisper still echoed faintly in his mind:
"The buried one remembers you."
"Maybe it's a warning," he said.
Hester shook her head. "It could be a tether. A call. There were rumors... Verin spoke of certain ruins where symbols like this would appear after dreams—dreams not your own."
Ashra returned from the fog. "There's a fork ahead. North goes up to the Spine. West leads to an old observatory. Doesn't look like it's been touched in decades."
They chose the observatory.
The trail twisted sharply and ended in a flattened rise. Half-collapsed columns framed a stone platform etched with moss-eaten runes. At the center stood a wide bowl—an ancient scrying basin, cracked but intact.
Corwin approached it. The air around it shimmered.
When he touched the basin's rim, the stone grew warm.
A shadow moved across its surface—his reflection—but not entirely his. The eyes were wrong. Too dark. Too deep. Something within them stared back.
Then it spoke, not aloud but inside him:
"You are not the first. But you may be the last."
He staggered back, nearly falling. Ashra caught him.
"What did you see?"
He shook his head. "A reflection. But it... wasn't me. It said I wasn't the first."
Liran stared at the bowl. "What the hell does that mean?"
Hester's voice was hushed. "There are legends. Of lineages bound by unfinished transmutations. Of memories carried not in blood—but in thought, passed from one seeker to the next. You may be carrying more than Verin's wish, Corwin."
Ashra looked to the horizon. The Spine loomed beyond the fog.
"If we're going to find answers," she said, "they'll be there."
They left the observatory in silence, each burdened with new weight.
And as they walked, Corwin's thoughts returned again to the mark—the circle and the line. A symbol, a name, a thread in a tapestry he'd never known he was part of.
Something buried was waking.
And it knew exactly who he was.