The ravine took them like a throat swallowing stubborn medicine—narrow, cold, and lined with old scrapes where floods had remembered anger. The air cooled their sweat into chills. Their footfalls returned as whispers. Somewhere above, the riders fanned along the rim; torches crawled like orange caterpillars against the sky.
Jun kept to the left wall, hand brushing the stone as if to teach it his shape. "We can't outrun hooves if they find a way down."
"They won't risk horses here," Kael said. His voice carried the authority of old scars. "They'll send dogs and men with hooks."
"Dogs?" Luo Chen's chest tightened around the word. He remembered wolves yielding before the sigil's flare, not because of him but because of something older in the mark. Dogs were different. Dogs belonged to men.
"Marrowhounds," Kael added. "Snouts squared by iron muzzles. They don't howl; they thrum. You'll hear the chain first."
As if summoned, a faint metallic insect-buzz reached them—link on link, a vibration through stone. Lyra slid a twist of paper from her pocket and broke it. Bitter dust breathed out, carried low. "Sourleaf and salted ash," she whispered. "It buys us wrong trails for three turns of breath. After that, the dogs choose truth again."
"We need a choke," Kael said. He quickened his pace until the ravine jogged and narrowed on a collapsed lip. "Here."
The place was mean and useful: a slide of rock that had pinched the ravine into a neck two men wide, with a shelf above it like a heavy eyebrow. The darkness deepened here; even the stars seemed to refuse the cramped geometry.
Kael put his back to the eyebrow-shelf and rolled his shoulders, the sound of mail a dry rain. "Jun, stones. Aim for eyes and knees. Lyra, sourleaf twice more when they hit the turn, then get behind the shelf. Boy—" his eyes flicked to Luo Chen, then away like a man refusing a temptation "—if your mark in the arm has any way of making beasts doubt, sharpen it. But don't burn yourself to bones trying."
Luo Chen swallowed. "It doesn't burn. It… pushes." He had no language for it that did not sound like theft. He positioned himself one step forward of Kael, just enough to catch the first thrum with his body.
The chain came first, a hum that traveled through the soles of their feet. Then paws, not delicate like wolves but driving, blunt. Three shapes burst around the corner—low, broad-chested, with black iron cages riveted around their snouts to turn muzzles into rams. Their eyes caught the starlight and broke it into shards.
"Now," Kael said, and the word cut time in half.
Jun's sling snapped. The stone cracked against an eye with a wet sound and the first hound skidded sideways, claws carving chalky lines. Lyra's second twist burst—salted smoke crouched low, tasting like the underside of a burned pot. The dogs hesitated, heads jerking, as if the air had suddenly learned to lie.
Luo Chen stepped, the sigil hot-cold along his forearm. He didn't say the old word because words made things linger. He only let the memory of it widen in his chest. The pressure punched outward—no fire, no light; a weight laid across the air at knee height. The lead hound hit it and staggered, its hindquarters wobbling as if the ground had tilted against its will. The second crashed into the first; the third leapt—smart—and met Kael's shield with a meaty clang. Kael shoved, pivoted, and drove his shoulder under the beast's chest, flipping it. It thrashed, iron muzzle chewing sparks from rock.
Jun's sling sang again, and again. Another eye burst. The second hound, half-blinded, snapped sideways, jaws clanging against iron. It recovered with a savage shake and leapt at Luo Chen, rage making geometry simple.
Luo Chen raised his forearm, not because it was a plan but because it was the only part of him that remembered what to do. The sigil flared—pain like a line whipped along the tendon—and the hound's front legs folded midair, dumping it in a tangle of muscle and chain. It scrabbled up anyway, fury now an answer to a question no one had asked.
Kael moved like a door locking. His sword punched low, under the iron cage, into the soft hinge where throat meets shoulder. Hot breath washed his knuckles. He twisted, withdrew, shoved. The hound collapsed, legs pedaling dreams that had teeth.
"Back!" Lyra hissed. She flung her last twist at the corner. The smoke grabbed scent and kneaded it wrong, smearing paths.
The fourth and fifth hounds slammed the bend, iron muzzles battering stone. The narrow saved them. Only one could enter at a time. Kael met the next with his shield, took the hit on the rim, and stepped aside to let momentum do what blades could not. The beast caromed off the wall and Jun's stone found the ear, the crack buckling it just enough for Kael's sword to find work.
The sixth hound didn't commit. It hung back, thrumming, clever enough to learn from corpses. Voices echoed behind it—human, clipped, impatient. Hooks rasped stone. Men.
"We go," Kael grunted. "Move!"
They stumbled over dead weight and into the darker gut of the ravine. Behind them, a handler's curse stabbed the night. A hook scraped bone; a hound whimpered and then snarled again, meaning the handler had dragged it across its dead brother to teach it contempt.
Jun jogged backward, sling whirling low, teeth bare. "I hit three. Tell me you care."
"I care," Lyra said, dry. "Keep your ankles under you. Pride falls worse than men."
Luo Chen's forearm trembled where the sigil had flared. He flexed his fingers. They tingled as if each tendon had learned to talk and wanted to be congratulated. The pendant lay calmer now, a cool stone against a hotter chest. He touched it once and felt his breath even. Not guidance—permission to keep moving.
"You did well," Kael said, eyes forward, voice without sugar. "Don't expect it to always work. Wolves and hounds feel the old names. Men don't."
"Men sometimes do," Lyra murmured. "They just pretend they don't because it helps them lead wolves."
The ravine jogged right, then left. Water once had learned to argue with the ridge here. The floor broke into ribs. Lyra slowed and tapped a stone with her boot. It sounded hollow.
"Culvert," she said. "Old. If it still runs under the ridge, it will spit us into the feeder gully."
Kael crouched, spread his fingers on the stone, and listened with his palm. "It's not full. But it's narrow and rotten. We break it wrong, we bury ourselves."
Jun rolled his shoulders. "So we don't break it wrong."
They found the capped mouth a little farther on: a slab set into a frame of stone. Mortar, long ago, had learned to be brittle. Lyra pried at the seam with a flat length of iron she wore sewn into her cloak hem for exactly this sort of ignorance. Kael wedged his dagger into the crack and leaned his weight. The slab moaned, objecting. Somewhere back in the ravine, a horn answered—angry that anything would dare to sound like pain before it arrived.
"On three," Kael said. "One. Two—"
He didn't say three. He lifted and shoved and the slab popped up with a gust of stale air smelling of old rot and the metallic memory of floods. Blackness in the throat. Lyra leaned in with the hooded lantern and let a lick of light taste the inside. The culvert led away in a squat run—waist-high at best, sloped down, ribs of stone every few steps like vertebrae left in a carcass to keep the shape honest.
Jun made a face. "I've been in sweeter graves."
"Then you'll be comfortable," Lyra said, and slid in first, lantern tucked against her chest. "Hands and knees. Talk only if the water grows words."
Kael gestured at the opening with a spartan courtesy. "After you," he told Luo Chen. "If it collapses, I'd rather be the one you don't have to dig out."
"Why?" The question came out harsher than Luo Chen intended.
"Because I'm heavier," Kael said simply, and dropped in after him.
Jun followed, muttering affection at his sling. He kicked the slab back with his heel enough to make the opening look a little less like an invitation, then crawled. The culvert hugged them with cold stone ribs. Their knees found wet patches where ancient mud had decided eternity needed company. Twice Lyra paused to hold the lantern over side cracks, testing draft. Twice she chose the less accommodating turn.
Behind them, the ravine learned a new sound: the scrape-click of iron hooks and the cautious curse of men who had seen too many fellows vanish into holes. The marrowhounds did not like the culvert; the chain's thrum hesitated, uncertain, then grew thin, as if fear had bled some of the iron away.
The culvert pitched down, then flattened. Luo Chen's elbows ached. The sigil's soreness had settled into a deep, useful throb. He could smell Lyra's herbs and Kael's iron and Jun's stubborn soap, the kind of tallow that clung to boys who stole time to wash because elders had told them to.
Light thinned ahead. Lyra doused the lantern to let the night be the night. They crawled the last strides by feel and fell, graceless and grateful, out of the culvert's lower mouth into a shallow feeder gully furred with cold grass.
The sky had bleached from ink to bruised blue. Dawn had mischief in it.
"Up," Kael said. "Hargel will test the culvert from both ends. He'll guess we used it."
Jun squinted east. On a distant ridge, something glinted—three quick flashes, like sunlight hitting polished metal, then nothing. He frowned. "Tell me that's a trick of stupid stars."
Lyra followed his gaze. Her mouth went thin. "Mirror. Sanctum signal. They watch without helping."
"So we've got wolves at our heels and priests on the hill," Jun said. "Anyone else want to adopt us?"
"Cityfolk," Lyra said. "But they charge rent."
Kael started them north again, angling along the gully's bend. He did not lead so much as take a place where a blow would land first if one came. He did not look back to see if they followed; he listened for the sound of their breath to keep count for him.
Luo Chen let the pendant settle against his chest and matched Kael's pace. The world had become a series of throats to survive and lips to slip through. He was tired of being swallowed. He wanted a place to stand where the ground accepted him.
The gully flexed, shivered into a shallow saddle, and then offered them a low shelf of rock with a view of the plain's scarred skin. Lyra lifted a hand and they dropped, low, letting grass hide outlines. Below, a thin file of Wolffire footmen trotted along the ravine's spine, dogs at their knees, torches caged to keep smoke tight. Discipline hung around them like a smell.
Jun counted under his breath. "Seven. No—eight. Two handlers. One man with hooks. One with a horn. They're not fools."
"Good," Kael said. "Fools kill themselves. These will try to kill us."
"Your optimism is a bad soup," Jun muttered.
"Eat what's put in the bowl," Kael returned, and the corner of Lyra's mouth betrayed the smallest ghost of approval at the neatness of the exchange.
They lay still until the file passed. Once, a dog's head snapped up, nose lifting. The salted ash had long since died, but the wind had decided to forget them for a quarter of an hour. The file moved on, a thin danger stitched to the land with marching feet.
Luo Chen only breathed again when the last torch had become an ember behind a ridge. His chest hurt with the luxury.
Kael rose first. "We keep the saddle. Avoid the sky-line. Anyone looking with glass will mark silhouettes faster than sins."
"And sins are easy to mark," Lyra said, and touched her sleeve where a scorch had cut lace from wool.
They moved, low and fast. Dawn pocketed stars and began counting other coins. The light made everything more honest—including fear.