POV: Aria
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The first breach came at dawn.
I felt it before I heard the war horn — a shudder in the earth beneath the lodge floor, like the roots that once fed the Hollow had come alive again. I jolted awake where I’d collapsed beside Kael’s cot. He wasn’t there.
Just the shape of him left in rumpled blankets. The smell of blood and wolf and ash.
I pushed to my feet, the mark throbbing like an open wound under my collar. My heartbeat matched its pulse now. No beginning. No end.
Outside, the wind carried two things — snow and the Faithful’s chant.
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By the time I reached the old southern gate, the world had turned white with more than frost. Ash swirled on the wind, drifting down in soft flakes that smelled like burnt pine and iron.
Kael stood at the gate’s edge, shirt torn, claws
