The elder came to Aria at dusk, when the sky over Silvercrest burned the same color as cooling embers.
She had been alone near the edge of the training grounds, running through the Moonfire sequences Lyr had drilled into her until her muscles trembled and her mind went quiet. The air smelled of sweat, pine resin, and distant smoke from the cookfires. Her palms still glowed faintly, veins threaded with silver light that pulsed like a second heartbeat beneath her skin.
She sensed him before she saw him.
Old Hadrien never walked loudly. He moved like the forest itself had taught him how to be unnoticed. Yet Moonfire hummed in her chest the moment he stepped within twenty paces, reacting to the weight of something unsaid pressing against him.
She turned.
His lined face was more drawn than
