The climb to Mare's Spine tested more than their strength.
The path narrowed to a ledge barely wide enough for two feet. One misstep would mean a fall into the fog-thick chasm below. Wind howled through the rocks like a dying choir, and the stones themselves seemed etched with warnings in languages no one spoke anymore.
By mid-afternoon, the fog parted briefly to reveal a crumbling outpost—an alchemist's refuge built into the cliff itself. They entered through a cracked stone archway flanked by rusted guardian statues, their eyes set with cloudy gemstones.
Inside, it was silent.
Dust coated everything, but the structure had held. An old hearth. Workbenches. Racks of shattered vials. And shelves—hundreds of them—lined with scrolls and stone-bound books.
Ashra lit a lantern. Its glow flickered against the walls, revealing sigils carved in a circle around the main chamber.
Corwin stared. They matched the mark he'd seen.
He turned to Hester. "These are tethers, aren't they?"
She nodded slowly. "This whole place was meant to contain something."
Liran walked to the center, where an obsidian dais held a sealed coffer covered in silver script. "If it's still sealed, it's for a reason. Let's not open anything unless we know what it is."
Ashra was already examining the scrolls. "There's something here. Notes. Schematics. They were building something—no, rebinding it."
Hester moved to help her. Corwin stayed by the coffer, staring at the unfamiliar glyphs. They pulsed faintly under his gaze.
A voice stirred in his memory.
"You are not the first. But you may be the last."
He reached out—not to open the coffer, but to understand it. His fingers brushed the surface.
And the sigils flared.
A scream tore through the chamber—not human, not beast. A sound of remembrance. The air thickened. Dust rose. One of the guardian statues groans.
Ashra drew her blade, "Something woke up".
Liran was already at Corwin's side, pulling him back. Hester slammed the nearest tome shut.
A gust of wind burst through the broken archway, and with it came a scent of rot and burning copper.
Footsteps echoed from the shadows.
Not Carrion.
Worse.
Figures cloaked in veils of static and light, their outlines shifting between the real and the remembered.
"Wraithbinders" Hester breathed."They were the First Alchemist's sentinels. Though lost to the Cataclysm".
Corwin's blood turned to ice.
He had seen them before.
In his dreams.