The first stone cracked with a sound like a bone snapping.
Aria heard it from the corridor before she felt it.
A pulse rippled through the packhouse walls—low, humming, wrong. The air thickened, heavy with something ancient and volatile. The warding stones had always been silent guardians, humming faintly beneath the floors and within the beams of the ceilings, their magic woven into the structure of Silvercrest like veins in a body.
Now those veins were spasming.
“Everyone out!” Rowan’s voice thundered from somewhere downstairs.
Boots thudded. Doors flew open. Wolves shifted half in panic, half in instinct. The scent of fear hit the air like smoke.
Aria turned the corner at the same time Kaden did.
They nearly collided.
She stopped short. He did too. For one suspended second, they
