We didn't stop until the fires behind us were only smudges on the smoke-veiled horizon.
Agro carried us through the night, hooves thudding soft over blackened earth, his breath steady and hot. Hollowstone was gone—maybe not yet erased, but gutted. Burnfaith wouldn't leave survivors. Not if they could help it.
We made camp in the lee of a ruined bridge that once belonged to the Empire's southern rail spine. Most of it had collapsed, leaving rusted ribs jutting from the hillside like the bones of some long-dead beast. Agro drank from a shallow stream trickling through the ash, then stood watchful while I tended the fire.
Three shards now.
Three fragments of memory sealed in glass and ruin, humming low in the bottom of my pack.
I hadn't touched the new one yet.
I didn't need to.
The others whispered still. Flashes came at night, slipping behind my eyes when I tried to sleep. Sword forms I didn't recognize. Words in a language I didn't speak. A name I had never known carved into the side of a ruined wall that made my heart stutter.
It wasn't mine.
But the Crown wanted me to remember it.
I didn't.
Not yet.
The fire cracked low. I chewed a strip of dried meat from the Hollowstone supply run, washing it down with smoke-tainted water. Agro's ears twitched at every gust of wind. He still hadn't let his guard down.
Smart.
The Spine wasn't safe. Nothing east of Draal was. And what was west?
Unknown roads.
Warlord cities. Memory forges buried under sand and bone. Kingdoms built on lies and blood.
The world didn't end at the Burnfall.
It only broke.
And broken things never rest long.
Morning came with a sky the color of old bruises. We moved early. Agro's stride was surer now, though he still limped slightly. I didn't push him. We'd need him healthy when the real trouble started.
The map—such as it was—claimed a trade pass ran through the lower Spine valleys, twisting through a ravine called Vire's Maw. It was supposed to connect Hollowstone with the old kingdoms west of the Scorchreach, though most said the route had been lost after the Burnfall.
Lost or buried.
Either way, I didn't trust the map.
It was stitched on faded cloth, half-burned on one edge, ink bleeding through where water had soaked it. A gift from the Hollowstone merchant—along with two flint charges and a spare canteen, thrown in as parting payment.
The man had died before I could finish thanking him.
We passed into the Maw by noon. The ravine carved a cruel path between cliffs of melted stone and rust-veined shale. Dead trees jutted from the cliffs like splintered spears, their roots clawing into cracks.
Crows circled above.
Not a good sign.
Halfway through the gorge, Agro stopped.
Ears flat.
Nostrils flared.
I slid from the saddle, hand on the hilt of my blade—the same rusted sword I'd pulled from a corpse in Hollowstone. It was chipped, crooked at the edge, but it had opened one zealot's throat and held through the rest.
Good enough.
The rocks ahead shifted.
I crouched.
Movement in the shadows—not natural. Not wildlife.
A low rasp. Metal against stone.
Then a shape emerged.
Taller than a man. Limbs wrong—bent like broken marionettes. Bone protruding through flesh stitched with relic-wiring, a face that had no face. Just a smooth plate of mirrored alloy scorched around the edges, and what might've been a voice modulator, clicking softly.
Ashborn.
No.
Worse.
This one was old. Ancient.
The Crown hummed violently.
I backed away, sword drawn.
Agro snorted behind me, hooves shifting. The thing raised one arm, a blade unfolding from the wrist—twisted metal, serrated edge humming faint energy.
No time to think.
It lunged.
I barely sidestepped, blade flashing up to deflect the strike. Sparks burst where metal met metal. My wrist nearly broke from the impact.
The thing was strong.
Faster than the others.
It spun again—blade slicing in a downward arc—I blocked, barely. My boots skidded over ash and shale. The thing hissed, the modulator clicking fast.
Then I moved.
The memory slid into place.
Sword form seven.
Half-buried in my spine.
My body obeyed before my mind caught up.
I rolled beneath its strike, came up on its blind side, and drove my rusted blade into the seam at the base of its neck. The edge cracked against alloy, slid between joints. The creature spasmed.
Electric surges burst from its limbs, but I twisted hard, yanked the sword free, and kicked it backward into the rocks.
It twitched.
Collapsed.
Smoke hissed from its chest cavity.
And then it was still.
I stood panting, hand shaking, blade blackened from the heat.
Agro nudged my arm. I blinked at him.
"Don't look at me like that," I muttered. "I'm making this up as I go."
The Crown had grown quiet.
Too quiet.
I approached the corpse slowly. Its chest cavity had split on impact. Inside, among the cracked circuits and corroded neural nodes, something pulsed faintly.
Another fragment.
Not a Crown Shard.
Something different.
A relic core.
I pocketed it carefully. Whatever it was, it didn't belong in that body. Someone had engineered it, used old tech to raise something dead.
And that someone was still out there.
We rode west.
Beyond the Maw, the land sloped gently into a basin thick with black grass and fossilized tree husks. Broken walls jutted from the soil—ruins of an outpost or maybe an old waystation.
I set camp beneath a crumbling arch, the sunset bleeding crimson and copper through the cracks.
Agro lay nearby, legs folded, eyes half-shut.
I stared into the fire.
The shard hummed.
Three pieces now.
A whisper of swordsmanship.
A trail of blood.
And a name burning the back of my skull.
Kael Varros.
The fire cracked.
Tomorrow, we'd head for the Vein Markets. If they still existed. If anything did.
For now, I slept with my blade at hand.
Because the Spine hadn't finished bleeding.
And neither had I.