SCARLETT
The wail rolled across the blackened plain again low, mournful, and vast.
It wasn’t the void’s cold laughter.
It was something older.
Kael stiffened beside me, firelight flickering along the twin swords strapped across his back. “That sound,” he said quietly, “doesn’t belong to any creature I know.”
Darius’s storm-sense prickled the air. Sparks leapt from his fingertips as he scanned the darkness. “It’s not natural. Feels like the sky itself is warning us.”
Lucien tilted his head, eyes narrowing to ink-black slits. Shadows coiled tighter around him, restless. “No,” he said. “Not warning. Calling.”
The wind changed. A faint metallic tang drifted in blood and iron, sharp enough to burn the back of my throat. My crescent mark flared, pulsing in rhythm with the unseen cry. Eac
