CHAPTER 39: THE LAST DOOR
Silas’s faint, half‑forgotten clues led us high into the pine‑cloaked pass at the very edge of the valley, up a winding trail so overgrown even the old maps had ceased to mark it. We rode slow, single file, the air growing crisp and thin as we climbed above the tree line, where stone outcrops jutted like broken teeth against the pale blue sky. After hours of searching, we found what we were looking for: the mouth of a natural cavern, once used to store winter supplies for the first riders, long sealed off by fallen rock and thick, tangled bramble that no one had bothered to clear in twenty years.
We cleared the entrance by hand, careful not to dislodge the rock above us, and the heavy iron door — rusted shu
