The Spine fell behind us like a broken promise.
For two days, Agro and I followed the dead roads west—blackened stone veins cracked by age and fire, now little more than suggestions of where the empire's reach once stretched. The wind stank of scorched resin and iron, and birds circled overhead, watching. Always watching.
I kept one hand on the hilt of my sword. The other never strayed far from the pack—the crown tucked deep inside, wrapped in cloth and silence. It hadn't spoken since the Spine. But that didn't mean it was asleep.
Nothing that cursed ever sleeps.
By dusk of the third day, we reached the edge of what passed for civilization now.
A settlement—or the memory of one.
Charbrink.
Built in the hollowed skeleton of a collapsed trade-spire, it leaned against the cliffside like it was trying not to fall the rest of the way. Rusted scaffolding clung to blackened stone. Smoke curled from makeshift vents punched through old alloy panels. Traders and scavengers camped beneath tattered awnings, shadows flickering in oillight.
A rusted gate stood half-open, manned by two guards with mismatched weapons and less patience.
"Name," one of them asked, too tired to sound suspicious.
"Kael," I said.
"Business?"
"Trade. Rest. Feed for the horse."
They didn't press. Just waved me through with a bored nod.
Inside, Charbrink pulsed with the quiet desperation of a place clinging to relevance. Tents stitched from tarp and hide. Fires burning in old furnace vents. Vendors hawking old gear, fungusbread, broken relics, and dried bloodleaf. A dog barked somewhere I never saw.
But there was life. Ragged, half-starved, bone-thin life—but it still moved. Still bought. Still watched.
I dismounted near a rust-eaten water trough where Agro dipped his muzzle, weary but alert.
A merchant stall caught my eye—laid out beneath a tarp marked with burned runes. Relic scrap, salvaged alloy plating, and what looked like a semi-intact neural filament coil. The man behind it had soot in his beard and scars across his palms.
"You lost?" he rasped.
"Looking for information. And horse feed."
"Information costs more."
I dropped five Ash Shards into his hand. Crude black glass, dull and scratched, but they spent the same here as anywhere.
He handed over a pouch of grain, then leaned closer.
"Something stirred east of here. Burnfaith moved fast. Southbound. Not a raid. A hunt."
"What were they after?"
"Something stolen. Something old. I didn't ask more."
His eyes flicked to the pack on my back. To the shape hidden beneath the canvas.
"Careful what you carry, stranger. The world's listening."
"So am I."
He laughed. Short, rasping. "Then you'll hear it soon enough."
That night, I paid three more Ash Shards to stable Agro in a half-collapsed barn that creaked like it wanted to die. The stablehand was missing two fingers and had the thousand-yard stare of someone who'd survived too many things with names.
I found a place in the tavern—"tavern" being generous. Just a corner of shelter with fungus-wine and tired music leaking from a rusted player shard.
I nursed a drink. Let the night breathe.
The Crown pulsed faintly in my pack.
I didn't touch it.
Didn't need to.
The memory it gave me still whispered beneath my skin. A ghost of form. Movement. Weight. Sword. Fire.
And a voice.
"Remember, or you'll die forgotten."
Dawn came like a blade—cold, bright, merciless.
Agro was stronger. Rested. So was I.
As we saddled up, a boy ran by and tossed something into my hand. A folded slip of old parchment.
A map.
Marked with a thin red line.
A trail west, past the Veinfall cliffs. Past the rust jungles. Toward the ruins of Velmark—a city whispered to hold relics the gods buried on purpose.
There was no name. No payment asked.
Just a message scrawled in rough ink:
"If you're carrying what I think—don't stop walking."
Agro snorted behind me. The wind tugged at my cloak. The sky bled light over the cliff's edge like fire caught in slow motion.
I mounted.
The road ahead coiled like a scar. Waiting.
And beneath it all, something stirred.
The Crown.
Not louder. But clearer.
West.
Remember.
My fingers tightened on the reins.
Agro stamped once. Ready.
I didn't look back.