CHAPTER 66:
The mountains rose ahead, jagged and dark, swallowing the sky. The air grew colder with every mile, carrying that faint, metallic tang we remembered so well — the taste of something ancient and waking. The company fell silent, no songs, no laughter, only the steady crunch of hooves on stone and the creak of leather. We rode in a tight formation, pairs flanking each other, eyes scanning not just the cliffs ahead but the minds beside us.
By sunset, we reached the valley’s edge — the same hollow where we had camped months before. It was unchanged: black stone, still air, the faint, thrumming hum that vibrated up through the soles of our boots. But this time, we were not six. We were two hundred. And this time, we did not run.
We dismounted in the shadow of the peaks, forming a
