RIDING WITH THE BEAST
The days stretched long and heavy, the air thick with a silence that felt less like peace and more like the pause before a storm. Every creak of a branch, every sudden cry of a bird, every cloud that drifted low over the eastern peaks made hands drift toward hilts and heads turn toward the horizon. Corvus did not strike in force — he struck in the dark, in the quiet places where fear took root deepest. A supply cart vanished on the mountain pass, its driver gone without a trace, only the black raven mark carved into a boulder where the road turned. Fires were lit at midnight on the ridges, burning bright for an hour then dying away before anyone could reach them, leaving nothing but ash and a cold dread that spread through the valleys like frost. Letters arrived at i
