K A E L O R
Before dawn, I found the first dead Guild hunter hanging from an Ashmoore boundary tree.
Not by rope.
By his own silver restraint, looped beneath his arms and drawn tight enough to hold him upright against the trunk.
His boots hovered inches above the frozen ground. Blood had dried in black rivers down his chest, but there was no wound where his throat should have been.
There was simply nothing.
No torn flesh. No ragged bite. A clean hollow carved beneath his jaw, as though someone had removed his voice with a blade and taken the name with it.
Taren stopped beside me. Behind us, two trackers spread through the pines without speaking. The forest held its breath around them.
“Guild?” he asked.
I caught the chemical sting beneath the blood first—scent-dulling powder, bitt
