The land sharpened into stone teeth by the time they reached Ironhook Ridge.
The earth changed first — grass giving way to shale, then shale to red rock, then red rock to jagged slabs that jutted out of the ground like broken commandments. The ridge rose ahead in violent angles, a canyon splintered by time, cracked open as if the world itself had been struck once by an ancient hammer.
Lucas slowed his horse and looked up toward the towering walls. The sun hit the stone at an angle that made every shadow stretch long and thin like pointing fingers.
"Hell of a place for a hideout," Virgil muttered, spitting a wad of dust from his tongue.
Silas answered, "That's why men like Martin pick it."
Maeve kept staring at the ridge with tight shoulders. Corren didn't stare at all — his pale eyes flicked from shadow to shadow, never resting, as if the darkness whispered to him.
Lucas remained silent.
His mark pulsed beneath his shirt with a soft, rhythmic heat. Not pain. Not warning. More like… recognition.
The ridge knew him.
He didn't know how.
He didn't know why.
But the air around him trembled faintly, like a breath held by the sky.
They tied their horses behind a crooked limestone boulder and climbed the ridge's outcrop until they had a vantage point over the canyon basin.
That was when they saw the outlaw camp.
A cluster of tents and bedrolls lay scattered below like a settlement scraped together by desperation. The fires were low, barely more than embers. Men walked between them with twitchy eyes and twitchier hands. A few were laughing, drinking, sharpening knives — but not like normal outlaws. Their movements were uneven, staggering, as if their bones didn't fit right inside their skin.
Lucas narrowed his eyes.
Two faces he recognized from the cabin — men who'd held the two sisters down, laughing while Lucas fought the ones behind him. Their silhouettes lit by torchlight burned themselves onto his memory again.
Silas rested a hand on the rock beside Lucas. "You know any of 'em?"
Lucas's voice was quiet, threaded with something colder than the canyon's air.
"Some of them."
Silas didn't push it.
Maeve pointed down. "See that one? Limping hard, like something's pulling him sideways."
Lucas saw him — a man dragging one foot like it belonged to someone else. His spine twisted every few steps, like a puppet jerked by invisible string.
Corren whispered, "Shadows cling to him wrong."
Virgil rolled his eyes. "Corren sees shadows even when his eyes are closed."
"No," Maeve said sharply. "He's right."
Lucas felt the pulse again.
A soft drumbeat beneath his ribs.
Something was wrong in that camp.
More than outlaws.
More than murder.
Something touched by hunger older than the land.
They crawled down behind a cluster of rocks where the ridge fell away, discussing the approach in low whispers.
Silas folded his arms. "We go around the back. Narrow canyon. Take the high ground. Thin their numbers before they know we're here."
Virgil tapped his revolver. "Or we just rush in and shoot until nothin' moves."
Maeve shot him a look colder than moonlight. "If you rush in, you'll die first."
"That's why I'm fast," Virgil snapped.
Silas ignored him and turned to Lucas. "What do you think?"
Lucas kept his tone even.
"We cut their numbers quietly. Force the larger group into the open. Make 'em climb the slope toward us. They'll be exposed."
Silas stared for a moment. Studying him.
"You talk like someone who's done this before."
Lucas didn't blink. "I have."
Silas nodded once. "We follow his plan."
Virgil muttered something mean under his breath. Maeve ignored him.
Corren pressed a hand to his temple.
"There's… movement in the canyon," he whispered.
"Minds… echoing. Not their own."
Silas clenched his jaw. "Stay sharp. And don't wander."
They entered the narrow slot canyon leading toward the back of the outlaw camp. The walls rose so close on each side that Lucas could touch both with his elbows. Sound moved strangely here — the clack of a pebble bouncing off stone echoed too long, like the canyon replayed the sound a second later.
Lucas paused halfway through.
Footsteps.
Behind him.
He turned sharply — nothing there.
But the hair on his arms rose.
Maeve whispered, "You heard it too."
Lucas nodded once.
Wind brushed his coat in the tight canyon.
Wind shouldn't move here at all.
But it did… softly… deliberately.
His mark warmed.
He said nothing.
They continued.
Two outlaws appeared at the opposite end, rifles slung, laughing about something. Their shadows stretched backwards despite the sun's angle.
Lucas quietly murmured, "Cover your eyes."
Silas frowned. "What—"
Lucas flicked a match and tossed it into the dust at their feet.
At that exact breath, the wind shifted.
A sudden burst of grit exploded upward, blinding the patrol. They coughed and stumbled, cursing. Maeve tensed beside Lucas — astonished.
Silas hissed, "How the—"
Lucas moved.
Before the outlaws blinked clear, he drew the Remington.
CRACK—CRACK
Two bodies fell.
Virgil whispered, "What the hell was that wind…?"
Lucas slid his revolver back into its holster.
"Luck."
Maeve didn't believe a word of it.
The canyon didn't either.
From above, the outlaw camp felt chaotic but navigable.
Up close, it felt diseased.
Men twitched in their bedrolls.
Shadows stretched too far.
Voices echoed with odd delay.
One outlaw turned his head as if listening to something only he could hear.
Corren trembled.
"They've been touched," he whispered.
"The void brushes them."
Silas hissed, "Not now — move."
Lucas descended with practiced silence, breathing the way Tavar had taught him — stillness, clarity, awareness.
He slid behind a sleeping outlaw and ended him quietly with Kairo's bone-handled knife.
Silas and Maeve dispatched two others.
The camp erupted in panic as the last guard shouted.
Lucas stepped out from shadow, Remington flashing in his hand.
CRACK—CRACK—CRACK
Three more down.
Silas's rifle thundered.
Maeve's knife struck a neck with surgical precision.
Virgil hollered something obscene and fired wildly.
Then something inhuman emerged from the far tent.
It was an outlaw once — Lucas recognized part of the face. But everything else was wrong. The man's limbs jerked at odd angles, like joints bending the wrong direction. His pupils were dilated until they swallowed most of his eyes. Veins bulged black beneath his skin, pulsing like worms.
Maeve whispered, "A Hollow-Touched…"
The thing charged.
Lucas inhaled deep —
Na'al breath pattern —
the world sharpening around him.
The wind curled around his legs.
He felt it.
That subtle push.
That Mark-born instinct.
The creature swung its twisted arm at Lucas's throat.
Lucas wasn't fast enough to dodge —
—but the wind moved him several inches sideways.
Just enough.
The swipe missed his neck.
Lucas fired point-blank into its chest.
Once.
Twice.
The creature shrieked — a layered sound, as if two voices screamed in discord. It fell to the dirt in a convulsion of limbs.
Virgil stumbled back.
"What in God's sin was—"
"Not God," Maeve breathed. "Something else."
Lucas didn't answer.
His mark glowed faintly under his shirt.
Once the camp quieted — smoke rising, bodies cooling — Silas kicked over crates until he found something that mattered.
"Martin!" Silas yelled into the canyon.
"Where are you hiding, you rat bastard?!"
They checked tent after tent, but Martin was nowhere — no sign except the tension in Lucas's bones tightening with every empty search.
Then Maeve called softly from the largest tent.
"Here."
Lucas entered first.
Inside:
Blood.
Torn cloth.
A chair overturned.
A map.
And on the back canvas wall — drawn in charcoal — three symbols:
I → II → ?
Lucas froze.
His mark pulsed.
Harder.
He felt heat spreading up his spine.
Virgil frowned. "The hell's that mean?"
Maeve swallowed. "Someone knows about him."
Lucas touched his chest unconsciously.
Silas kicked a crate.
"Where is this bastard?!"
Then a voice rolled across the canyon.
A voice Lucas had prayed he'd never hear again.
A voice that had laughed at the cabin.
Spat on him at the cliff.
Shot him with a grin.
Martin.
But it sounded wrong now — layered, distorted, echoing like someone speaking into a hollow barrel.
"MAAARROW…"
The canyon amplified it.
"I SAID YOU WOULDN'T DIE SO EASY…"
Silas drew his rifle.
Corren trembled violently.
"He's touched," he whispered.
"He's not just a man anymore…"
Lucas stepped forward toward the sound, hand hovering over his Remington.
The wind stirred around his boots.
The raven feather in his hat trembled.
His mark glowed faintly beneath his shirt.
Lucas whispered:
"…Martin."
Above them, ravens screamed.