The communication has arrived not by digital packet or faceless courier, but in the oldest fashion: tooth and claw. A young guard, conducting a dawn sweep of the eastern heights, found the gruesome package wedged in the fork of a lightning-struck pine. It was a rabbit, recently killed, but not eaten. Tied to its leg with a thong made from its own sinew was a scroll of birch bark, tightly rolled.
The act itself was a clear statement. It was politeness for a predator, a show of skill and proximity. The rabbit was an offering, or a warning. The guard brought it directly to Kael, its own scent spiked with alert.
In the solitude of his study, Kael examined the scroll. The bark was rough, but the script etched into it with a pointed tip—a claw, undoubtedly—was lovely and precise. It was not th
