7.1 – Smoke in the Halls of Velhara
The Council Chamber of Velhara had no windows.
Not by accident.
A place without windows couldn't be watched from the outside. And that was the way it had always been: secrecy over sunlight, shadows over openness. The old stone walls still held the scent of ancient fires, of sweat and spilled wine, of desperate pacts made beneath whispered curses.
Reyna sat at the far end of the table, fingers steepled, her expression unreadable.
Her father's chair—once at the head of the table—remained empty. No one sat there anymore. Not since the night his blood soaked through the floorboards during a raid no one spoke about.
"We're stretched thin," muttered Commander Therin, slamming a weathered map onto the table. "Three border posts have gone silent in a week. Scouts return without reports. Some don't return at all."
"And yet we've declared no war," Eira said from the opposite side. Her long braid coiled like a rope down her shoulder, her voice cutting sharp. "Dravien hasn't moved. At least not in the open."
"No. But something's moving in the woods," Reyna murmured.
The others looked to her.
"I've sent birds to our outliers. The last one returned with the message torn from its leg. It landed without eyes."
That silenced the room.
Eira leaned forward. "And yet Sera is silent."
"She's still in the south," Therin offered. "Patrolling the ruins."
"Too long," Reyna snapped. "No scout takes that long. She's either dead—" a pause, "—or hiding something."
The air shifted. A quiet tension curled at the corners of the room.
Then: "She wouldn't betray Velhara," Therin said, but it didn't sound like certainty. It sounded like a plea.
Reyna stood.
"She wouldn't… until she would."
She left the chamber, cloak sweeping behind her like spilled ink, and not one person moved to stop her.
7.2 – Dravien's Quiet Teeth
The fire in the Dravien War Hall roared high, but it did nothing to warm Aric.
He stood just inside the doors, arms crossed, watching the elders argue with the venom of old wolves protecting fading territory. Kael's absence hung over the room like a blade. But no one dared name it.
"He was last seen four days ago," spat Warden Vesh. "Riding north. Not south, not east. North."
"Maybe he's hunting," someone offered.
"In Velharan forests?" Vesh barked a laugh. "He's crossed the line. Again."
Aric didn't speak.
He couldn't.
Because he knew where Kael had gone. He knew what had started to happen—and how much worse it would become.
"He's our blood," the Matron muttered from her seat by the fire, old and fierce despite the years hollowing out her frame. "Dravien is thick with prophecy. Our line bends, but it does not break."
Aric met her gaze. "What if Kael wants it to break?"
Silence.
Then Warden Vesh turned on him.
"You were close with him once. What do you know?"
Aric hesitated.
And then the door burst open.
A scout, half-frozen, mud-smeared, blood on his collar, stumbled into the firelight.
"They've moved," he gasped. "The Velharan outpost near the river—it's gone. Burned. No survivors."
Whispers followed.
Then came the command.
"Ready the warlines."
The Matron's voice was soft.
"The fire's waking."
7.3 – The Whisper that Waited Too Long
They met at dusk, where the light couldn't decide whether to fade or fight.
Aric leaned against the crumbling wall of an old watchtower half-swallowed by moss. The structure had long since lost its purpose—like most borders between Velhara and Dravien, it stood as a monument to a peace maintained by silence, not trust.
Reyna approached with her hood drawn, but Aric knew her by the way she walked—sharp-footed, unhurried, as if every step was a decision. She didn't speak until she was close enough to see the tension in his jaw.
"You sent the raven," she said.
He nodded once.
"Why?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he glanced behind her, eyes scanning the line of trees before looking back. "Because I think something's happening that neither of our clans is ready for."
Reyna's lips twitched—not into a smile, but something colder. "You think Velhara can't handle truth?"
"I think Velhara's truth might look a lot like Dravien's shame."
Her stare sharpened. "Speak clearly, Aric."
He hesitated. Then: "Your scout outpost wasn't burned by Dravien."
"You're lying."
"No. I'm not." His voice was low. "We had a scout positioned not far from there. I read the report myself before it vanished. Whoever hit that post didn't leave anything behind. No markings. No symbols. Not even a footprint. It wasn't our way—and it wasn't yours, either."
She stepped closer. The edge of her cloak brushed against his.
"So what are you suggesting?"
He held her gaze. "That someone wants us at war."
A beat.
Then another.
Reyna's eyes flicked down the path she'd come, as if calculating the risk of being seen here. When she looked back at him, her voice was a breath above a whisper.
"Then it's already begun."
7.4 – What the Ravens Refused to Carry
The letter never left the rookery.
It sat in the bottom drawer of the Velharan archives, sealed but unmarked, forgotten by accident—or perhaps by design. Ink had dried on it in jagged strokes, a hurried hand trying to outpace consequence. The parchment smelled of cedar and ash.
Eiran was the first to find it.
He'd been sent to the archive hall under the guise of reviewing past treaties—terms drawn in the early peace that now hung by threads. But the older scrolls told him nothing new. They spun the same polished lies Velhara had long used to convince itself it was not at war, merely in waiting.
It was boredom that made him open the drawer.
And luck—or fate—that kept him from being seen.
The seal wasn't Velharan. It bore no sigil, no house mark. Just a smear of dried wax the color of old blood.
He unfolded the letter with hands that had survived three border fights and a winter famine but trembled now, as if this paper could wound deeper than blades.
To whom it will never be addressed,
The first cut will not come from Dravien or Velhara.
It will come from within.
And it already has.
Watch the quiet ones. They hold the matches. And the wind is changing.
—E
Eiran read it twice. Then again. The handwriting was sharp and tight, unmistakably familiar, though the name it belonged to stayed buried in the back of his mind like something he'd once dreamed and forgotten upon waking.
He folded it back just as slowly, as if speed might anger the ink.
Outside the archive windows, the sky was dimming, the horizon yawning in burnt orange. No birds flew toward the Dravien border. No ravens carried word of this.
Because some truths weren't allowed to fly.
He tucked the letter into his coat. There were only three people he could trust with it.
And one of them had been missing since the night of the border skirmish near the Weeping Pines.
He left the hall without alerting the guards, without filing the search log. The parchment thudded against his ribs with each step—like a second heartbeat that didn't belong to him.
7.5 – Beneath the Pines, the Silence Waits
The Weeping Pines earned their name for the way the wind moved through them—soft, dragging, almost mournful. In Velhara, the forest was treated like a threshold. Even the reckless didn't linger too long beneath its swaying limbs.
But someone had.
Eiran crouched near the base of an ancient tree, fingers brushing against the moss-stained earth. The bark here was splintered. Fresh, too. He'd seen claw marks like this before, but never this far west.
Beside him, Leith knelt silently, his eyes flicking from soil to trees, nose lifting like a wolf catching a trace of something wrong in the air.
"This is where she was last seen," Eiran said.
"Are we sure she didn't just cross the border?"
Eiran shook his head. "If Talia wanted to leave, she would've told me. You know that."
Leith stayed silent.
It had been nine days since the scout patrol vanished. No blood. No bodies. Just the half-burnt remnants of a torn Velharan sash hanging on a low branch, as if caught there mid-flee.
But Eiran had found something more. Half-buried under pine needles was a fragment of a clasp—a small, curved silver hook, the kind worn by field trackers. He knew it was Talia's. He'd given it to her last spring before her first solo mission.
"Someone's covering this up," he muttered. "Dravien wouldn't leave so little behind."
Leith's gaze snapped to him. "You think it's internal?"
"I don't know. But it's not clean. Look around—there's no drag marks, no blood trail. If they were attacked, it wasn't to kill. It was to erase."
Wind whispered through the trees again, and both men stood at once, the hairs on the backs of their necks rising.
"Do you feel that?" Leith asked.
Eiran nodded. "We're not alone."
For a heartbeat, the woods held its breath.
Then a snap. Not close, but not far enough to ignore.
They drew their blades in the same motion. Velharan steel glinted dull and grey in the low light. The pines loomed taller now, their branches like arms tightening around a secret.
A shadow moved between the trunks.
Then it was gone.
Eiran's chest thudded.
Something was watching them. Not with malice, not yet.
With patience.
As if deciding whether they deserved to know what really happened that night.
7.6 – Tracks That Shouldn't Exist
The prints weren't Velharan. And they weren't Dravien either.
Eiran stood over them, squinting in the fading light. Four-toed. Too broad for human feet, but not quite beast. The edges were deep, like whatever made them walked with weight—not in body, but in intent.
"What the hell is that?" Leith crouched beside him, brushing pine needles aside to reveal the full arc of the stride. "It's not a wolf. Not even the ones from the Blight."
Eiran said nothing. He'd seen tracks like this once, when he was still a boy. A storm had scattered the forest then, and afterward, they found the village dogs howling at nothing, refusing to leave the shade.
But the elders buried those stories. Said they were just echoes of the old wars. Said the woods only whisper if you're foolish enough to listen.
Eiran had listened. And now the woods weren't whispering.
They were remembering.
He traced one of the prints with a gloved hand. The soil was still disturbed. Whatever made it passed through hours ago—no more.
"They circled back," he said, voice low. "Look. The pattern breaks, here. Whatever this was… it stopped. It turned."
Leith swallowed. "Turned back toward us."
They rose again, blades drawn without a word this time.
The silence had changed. It was no longer patient.
It was watching.
Behind them, the pines closed in tighter. The path they'd taken in seemed to stretch too long now, the trees leaning just enough to make return feel… uncertain. The air was colder, but only around their shoulders, like breath on the nape of the neck.
"Let's move," Eiran muttered. "We'll double back. Bring this to someone who can read more into it."
"Who?" Leith's voice cracked slightly. "You trust anyone right now?"
Eiran hesitated.
"No," he finally said. "But someone needs to see this before we're added to the missing."
They moved fast, but not loud. Leaves didn't crunch. The ground seemed to give underfoot like softened flesh. The forest wanted them gone, but not lost.
That would come later.
When they reached the edge of the tree line, the pines opened like parting lips. The wind carried a single sound now—
Not a growl.
Not a voice.
A scream.
Far, but real.
Familiar.
Leith spun. "Talia?"
Eiran didn't answer. He was already running back into the trees.
7.7 – The Circle Unbroken
Night fell too fast in the Weeping Pines.
Eiran should've stopped. Should've told Leith to hold position and return with reinforcements. But something about that scream dragged logic out of his bones and replaced it with instinct.
And instinct had a face.
Talia.
Branches clawed at his cloak as he tore through the underbrush. The scream hadn't come again, but he didn't need a second one. He knew her voice—knew the break in it when she was afraid. He'd only heard it once, years ago, during a border skirmish when they were both still green. It haunted him after. Now it guided him.
Leith caught up at his side, breathing hard. "We should slow down—!"
A sound ahead. Movement.
They dropped low at once. Blades out. Eiran's hand signaled quiet, stillness.
A shadow moved ahead of them again—fast, wrong in the way it bent as it shifted between trees. Too tall, too narrow. Not human. Not animal.
Leith whispered, "I don't think that was her."
Eiran clenched his jaw. "It wasn't."
Still, they pressed forward. The path twisted toward a clearing they hadn't marked on the map. The trees here were wider, older. The kind that grew rings before the first stones of Velhara had been laid.
At the center of the clearing stood a stone marker.
Small, worn, almost insignificant—until you noticed the sigil carved into its base.
Dravien.
Both men froze.
"What the hell is a Dravien burial marker doing here?" Leith asked, voice low.
Eiran stepped forward, brushing dirt from the face of the stone. There were names etched along the edge, barely readable under moss and time.
But one stood out.
"Kael."
Eiran frowned. "A common name?"
"No," Leith said. "Not with that seal."
They both looked at each other.
"I thought the Dravien burned their dead," Leith said.
"They do," Eiran muttered. "Unless…"
He didn't finish. Because the wind shifted again.
And this time, something cold touched Eiran's spine—a breath of memory, not quite his own.
The trees whispered, low and deep.
"Blood remembers. Fire forgets."
Leith stepped back. "Did you hear that?"
But Eiran didn't answer.
Because the stone marker was gone.
It had been there.
He'd touched it.
And now there was only dirt.
And the smell of ash.
7.8 – The Ash Beneath Our Feet
Leith didn't speak again until they'd cleared the trees. The night had thickened like smoke around them, but neither could feel the cold anymore. Only the weight of what they'd seen—and what had vanished.
Back on the main trail, Eiran stopped and pressed both palms to his face, dragging them down slowly like he was trying to peel away something clinging to his skin.
"It was there," he said finally. "I touched it."
Leith's voice came quietly. "I know."
But his tone said he wasn't sure whether it had been real, or if the forest had twisted their senses. This part of the border wasn't mapped. Old Velharan maps marked the Weeping Pines as cursed ground. They'd ignored the stories. Thought them old myths told to keep children in line.
Eiran wasn't sure they were myths anymore.
They walked in silence until the trees thinned. Then Leith spoke again, this time without sarcasm or challenge.
"You think this has to do with the flare-ups at the border?"
Eiran didn't answer right away. He remembered the sigil. The name. The way the marker had vanished. The ash that clung to his boots now, as though the ground itself had scorched beneath his steps.
"Yes," he said. "But not just the border. Something deeper. Older."
Leith exhaled. "The Velharan council needs to know."
Eiran gave him a look. "And tell them what, exactly? That we saw a Dravien grave in the woods, and it disappeared?"
"If you put it like that, it sounds insane."
Eiran stopped walking.
"That's because it is."
But even as he said it, his mind went back to the name carved on the stone. Kael. There was no surname, no detail to anchor it—but there was weight in the way it was carved. Not forgotten. Not abandoned.
It was a name left behind with intention.
He turned toward the dark trees again, scanning for movement. He expected nothing.
But someone was watching them.
Further up the ridge, where the path dipped back toward Velhara's inner territory, a figure stood half-cloaked in moonlight. Hooded. Still. Their presence bled into the shadows too easily.
Eiran drew his blade.
The figure didn't flinch.
Then slowly, deliberately, the figure lifted a hand—and opened it.
Ash blew from their palm and scattered into the wind.
And just as quickly, the figure was gone.
Leith rushed forward. "Did you see—"
"I saw," Eiran said, sheathing his blade. "Let's go."
They made it back to the outpost by dawn. By then, the ash had finally faded from their boots.
But something lingered in Eiran's chest. A heat that had nothing to do with exertion. A question that wouldn't stop burning in the back of his mind:
Who was buried there?
And why was the grave hidden in Velhara, not Dravien?