The Stirrings of Fate
Far from the coven's quiet halls and sun-kissed rooftops, the Graven Mountains clawed at the sky like the ribs of a dead god.
Deep within the bones of those mountains, in a cavern older than memory, fire danced in unnatural rhythms. It pulsed red… then white… then black, as though it too had glimpsed what was coming.
The seer knelt beside a stone altar, bones wrapped in thin skin, her milky eyes clouded with more than time. Her breath came in gasps as the vision took hold, her spine arching in a shudder that echoed through the cave. Around her, tall candles blew out one by one, their flames snuffed by a breath that did not belong to this world.
Shadows curled like ink in water, spiraling toward the cavern ceiling.
Then came the whisper—rasped from a throat barely
