Chapter 13 – The Mark in the Trees
1240 Words
It started with a smell that didn’t belong.
Sylvi caught it on the afternoon breeze as she crossed the yard toward the main house—a sour, metallic tang threading through the usual smoke-and-pine of Vael territory. Not blood. Not rot. Something like old coins burned in a fire.
Her wolf recoiled. There.
She stopped so abruptly Jorek nearly collided with her.
“Whoa.” He windmilled his arms, almost losing the basket of folded bandages he was hauling. “Warn a guy before you do that.”
“Do you smell that?” she asked.
He sniffed. “Lunch?”
“Not lunch.” She tilted her head, following the thread. It came from beyond the buildings, from the fringe of trees north of the training grounds. “Stay here.”
“That was adorable,” Jorek said. “I’m absolutely coming with you.”
“Jorek.”
He grinned, but the freckles across his nose stood out stark against skin still a little sallow. “You dragged me back from the edge of feral, Arkett. You’re not sneaking off into creepy trees alone on my watch.”
“Your watch is supposed to be folding linens,” she said, but her protest lacked heat.
The scent pulled at her, wrong and compelling. Like the residue she’d felt in Kalen’s bond, only… thicker. Concentrated. A local knot in the net.
“Fine,” she muttered. “But if anything jumps at us, you’re bait.”
“Rude,” he said cheerfully, hurrying to keep up as she strode toward the tree line.
They passed the training ring. Riven, mid-lecture to a pair of teens, caught Sylvi’s expression and swore under his breath.
“What did you find now?”
“Smell,” she said. “North. Like the rot in Kalen’s bond, but outside of a body.”
His easy slouch vanished. “Get back inside.”
“Or,” she said, “we follow it while it’s still fresh.”
Riven sucked his teeth, then jerked his chin at the teens. “Find Maerin. Tell him we’re checking a scent anomaly north line three. And if he argues, tell him Sylvi said ‘I told you so’ in advance.”
The kids bolted.
Riven fell into step on her other side, casual to anyone watching. Sylvi knew better. Every line of him was alert, muscles coiled under worn flannel.
The further they went into the trees, the stronger it got. The normal forest smells—damp soil, mushrooms, fox—fell back under a slick, cold thread that seemed to snake along the ground ahead of them.
Her wolf pressed against her ribs, teeth bared. Hunter, she whispered. Trap.
“I know,” Sylvi murmured. “We’ll look and leave.”
“So we’re following the creepy scent deeper into the woods,” Jorek said under his breath. “Great. I totally didn’t almost die last week, this is fine.”
“Complain quieter,” Riven said. “Or louder. Maybe it’ll scare the bad magic away.”
They broke into a small clearing not far from the northern boundary stones. At first glance, it was ordinary: patchy grass, a ring of birches, an old stump in the center gone spongy with age.
Then Sylvi saw the marks.
On the nearest tree, about chest height, someone had carved symbols into the bark. Not deep—just enough to break the white skin and let sap bead. Lines and curves that made no sense as letters, but made every nerve in her body crawl.
The wrongness rolled off them in waves. The air over the marks shimmered faintly, like heat over asphalt.
“Don’t touch,” Riven said sharply as Jorek took an involuntary step forward.
“I wasn’t going to,” Jorek muttered, but he moved back anyway, shoulders hunching.
Sylvi came closer, stopping just outside the invisible line where the scent grew thickest. Her fingertips tingled as if they wanted to reach.
Old habits. Bad ones.
“This is a focus,” she said quietly. “Like a… signal booster. He’s anchored something here. The way the smell is layered—” She drew in another cautious breath. “Multiple passes. Not just one visit.”
“Vesk?” Riven asked, voice flat.
She didn’t say yes. Didn’t say no. Just lifted her hand, hovering it a few centimeters from the carved symbols.
Her gift pulsed, drawn like a moth to a flame.
She closed her eyes and let her awareness brush the top layer of the mark, one heartbeat, then two. Not sinking, just skimming.
Images flashed: a circle of trees under a different sky, wolves howling as something inside them snapped; blood on old snow; a man’s silhouette, shoulders bowed under a weight of grief that had curdled into something sharp.
And beneath it all, the same cold, deliberate presence she’d felt through Mara’s bond.
He’d been here. Not in person, maybe, but through his work. Through copies of his sigils, etched by others’ hands.
Sylvi jerked back. Her palm stung as if she’d brushed static.
“Yeah, that’s not ominous at all,” Jorek said weakly. “What is it, exactly?”
“A relay,” she said. “A way to taste your bonds from a distance. Maybe test how much pressure they’ll take before they break.”
Riven swore softly. “On our side of the boundary.”
“On everyone’s side,” Sylvi said. Her skin crawled. “I’d bet he has these half a dozen places by now. Maybe more.”
Branches cracked behind them. Corren strode into the clearing with Maerin at his shoulder, breath a little fast from the pace he must have kept to catch up. His gaze went immediately to the carved symbol, then to Sylvi.
“And?” he asked.
She met his eyes, the echo of that cold awareness still slick against her thoughts.
“He’s not just cutting bonds when they’re close,” she said. “He’s mapping them. Through trees. Through marks. Through us.”
Corren’s jaw went hard.
“Destroy it,” he told Riven.
Riven stepped forward, drawing the long knife at his belt. As the blade bit into the marked bark, the air vibrated, a low, unpleasant hum that made Sylvi’s teeth ache.
For a split second, as the first chunk of wood fell away, something else flashed along her senses—a flare of startled anger, very far away, like a hand slapped away from a control panel.
Found you, the memory of that earlier purr echoed. Now the return jolt tasted like: How dare you.
Sylvi stumbled, one hand catching the old stump.
Corren was at her side in an instant, fingers closing around her elbow.
“What?” he demanded.
She swallowed, pulse racing.
“He felt that,” she said. “Wherever he is. He knows we cut one of his marks.”
“And?” Maerin asked. “Is he coming to knock?”
“I don’t know.” Sylvi’s heart hammered against her ribs, half with fear, half with something grimly satisfied. “But for the first time, we didn’t just stand there and let him trace us.”
She stared at the raw wound in the birch where the sigil had been, sap already welling like tears.
“Now,” she added, voice low, “he knows we can cut back.”
- Writer
