Ashveil refused to descend.
Raen stood on the edge of the broken mesa, wind howling with a voice it shouldn't have had, whispering names in languages not even the dead remembered. Lyra leaned against a pillar of salt and bone, eyes fixed on the shattered horizon, where the crimson sun blinked.
Literally blinked.
The sun was watching them.
"It knows," Lyra said, her voice brittle. "Whatever that thing is... it remembers us."
Raen didn't respond. He felt it too. The way the heat no longer burned but judged. The way his own shadow stretched toward the sun like it wanted to return.
Ashveil circled overhead, wings cracked from the prison battle. The beast refused to land, snarling at something unseen. Raen knew why.
The world was wrong here.
The air hummed with ancient warnings. Trees bled white sap. Mountains inverted in on themselves, endlessly folding. And beneath it all, the ground trembled with the quiet rhythm of footsteps.
Marching.
"They're moving," Raen whispered.
