The ground ahead of them, where the trees thinned into a shallow depression choked with black moss, was uneven in a way that had nothing to do with natural terrain — mounded, regular, arranged with a deliberateness that made Luna's stomach turn the moment she understood what she was looking at.
"Graves," Garrick said quietly, coming to stand beside Corvin at the edge of the depression. "Dozens of them. Old. Older than anything I've charted on previous Pilgrimages."
"Not just old," Corvin said, crouching carefully at the nearest mound's edge, brushing aside a layer of black moss to reveal weathered stone beneath — a marker, its inscription worn nearly smooth by centuries of rain, but not quite illegible. "Look at the dates. Where they're still readable."
Luna knelt beside him, and felt s
