The path to the Chasm of Whispers was a descent into the world’s throat. The Serpent Clan led them not over the blighted land, but down into it, through fissures so narrow they had to turn sideways, into caverns where the air was still and ancient, smelling of wet clay and things that had never seen the sun. The beastlines here were not the vibrant rivers of the surface or the deep, resonant pulse of the Stonehold. They were sluggish, cold currents, heavy with secrets and the weight of epochs.
Ren moved like a man walking to his own execution. The brief, hard-won clarity he’d found at the mesa was gone, replaced by a grim resignation. He was the bait. The hook. The thought was a bitter pill. He had spent so long running from the shadow of his past, and now he was being led directly to its
