The wind howled like a mother mourning her child.
Quinn collapsed at the edge of the chasm, his claws scraping against rock that had never seen moonlight. The earth still trembled beneath him, as if it too was struggling to understand what had just happened.
Rowan was gone.
Swallowed by a myth.
Jace didn’t hesitate. He was already halfway down the crag, digging into stone with his bare hands, ignoring the blood that bloomed across his fingers.
“JACE!” Quinn’s voice cracked. “You’ll fall—!”
“I have to fall,” Jace barked, eyes wild. “He’s ours. I let them take him once—I won’t do it again!”
Kaelen stepped beside them, his usually unreadable expression broken open with a flicker of something close to awe… and fear.
“That wasn’t just a collapse,” he said. “That was the Rootwell opening
