POV: Ariana
By dawn, the wind had teeth.
It snapped at the edges of my cloak as I stood just beyond the lodge steps, watching crows circle the half-dead pine near the old Hollow’s edge. Frost bit through the leather of my boots. Somewhere behind me, Kael’s voice rumbled through the hall as he readied the enforcers, but out here — it was just me.
And them.
⸻
They called themselves the Faithful.
Thirty, maybe forty shapes gathered at the treeline. Cloaks stitched from wolf pelts. Masks carved from the roots of trees that should have rotted with the Hollow’s death. Some were witches — I could feel the leftover salt and iron woven through their pockets, the warding charms meant to bend magic to their will.
Others… were something less.
I felt them before I saw them. The ones who’d let t
