The winds that swept down from the Ash-Crest mountains were sharp and biting, carrying the scent of pine, cold stone, and something older—something that smelled of burnt wood and long-buried grief. For weeks we had watched their borders, sending no more envoys, demanding no audience, only leaving supplies at the edge of their lands: sacks of grain, bundles of healing herbs, furs for the coming cold, each marked only with the silver branch of our covenant. And every dawn, we found them taken. Not destroyed, not thrown back. Simply gone.
“They are watching,” Kael said one morning as we stood on the ridge, looking out toward the jagged peaks where the Ash-Crest made their home. “They do not trust us. But they do not turn away what keeps them alive.”
“Trust is not given in a day,” I answered
