The day after the council meeting, Rhea woke long before the sun.
Her dreams had been a chaotic tangle of red moonlight, crackling fire, and shadowed faces she couldn’t quite name. She rose without a sound, stepping carefully past the sleeping scouts in her cabin, and pushed the heavy wooden door open into the pre-dawn cold.
The forest greeted her in absolute silence. It was a dense, sacred sort of stillness—the kind that wrapped around her bones and reminded her that she belonged, at least in part, to this ancient mountain.
By first light, Isla had already called for morning combat drills. Rhea had come to expect the brutal routine, but as she walked out to the muddy clearing, the air felt different.
Lucci wasn't among the scouts stretched out near the woodpile. Instead, a stranger st
