We carried the crates out of the cellar one by one.
Caleb's trackers worked in grim silence, hauling each wooden box up the narrow stone stairs and setting them in a line across the mill's crumbling courtyard. Sixteen crates. Each packed tight with enough silver-glass to turn a pack gathering into a graveyard.
I stood at the edge of the row, my crescent mark burning steadily against my palm. The crimson circle stamped on the wood seemed to pulse faintly in the gray light, like a wound that refused to close.
Caleb crouched beside the nearest crate, his fingers hovering over the mark without touching it. "This isn't ink," he said quietly. "It's branded. Heat-pressed into the wood."
Kira knelt beside him. "No forge on this side of the continent uses that symbol. I've served three packs in
