The Elder had told her only one thing before sending her into the Hollow.
"Something waits at the bottom that wants to hurt you. Survive it without losing yourself."
No instructions. No blade. Kaelen hadn't asked for either.
The Hollow lay east of the caverns, a long bowl of black rock sunk between two ridges, its walls glazed smooth and glassy, as if the mountain had once melted and cooled in a single night. The guardians didn't speak about what had burned here. They walked around the Hollow the way people walk around a grave.
Kaelen walked into it.
Frost cracked under her boots. The air tasted of old ash and cold stone. High on the northern ridge she could see the two apprentices the Elder had posted as watchers, Wren and Pell, crouched behind a boulder with a signal horn between th
