Three days into the Ashen Moors, Roen realized he'd made a terrible mistake.
It wasn't the landscape, though that was bad enough. The Moors stretched before them like
a wound that refused to heal—a patchwork of scorched earth, dead trees, and the crumbling
ruins of fortresses that had fallen centuries ago. The sky hung low and gray, pressing down
like a lid on a coffin. The air tasted of ash and old copper, thick with the residue of ancient
battles.
Sometimes, when the wind shifted, Roen caught glimpses of the Severed Lands to the
west—where the Weave had been broken and reality itself had frayed. Nothing lived there.
Nothing could. The very ground was poisonous to magic, and anything that entered either
emerged changed or didn't emerge at all.
No, the mistake was simpler and more immediate: he'd assumed the hardest part would be
leaving Ashford.
His ribs ached with every step. The bandages Mirelle had wrapped around his torso were
stained with old blood and new sweat. Every breath was a reminder of Commander Vald's
fire, of the escape through the garrison, of the desperate run through streets he'd known his
entire life.
Now those streets were behind him. Ahead was nothing but wilderness, danger, and the
distant shape of the Pale Mountains on the horizon.
"How much farther?" Mirelle asked.
Roen squinted at the peaks. They didn't seem any closer than they had that morning. "Three
weeks. Maybe more if we have to avoid the main roads."
"That's not what I meant." Mirelle's voice was careful, measured. "I meant how much farther
until you admit you can't keep going?"
He stopped walking. Turned to look at her. She was fifteen years old, rail-thin, with copper
hair that had grown dull from days on the road. Her face was drawn, her eyes shadowed
with exhaustion. But there was something else there too—something that hadn't been there
in Ashford.
Stubbornness. Determination. The kind of steel that came from surviving things that should
have broken you.
"I can keep going," Roen said.
"Your ribs are bleeding again. I can see it through your shirt."
He looked down. She was right. A fresh stain was spreading across the fabric, dark and wet.
He'd pushed too hard today. They both had.
"We'll rest," he conceded. "For an hour. Then we move."
"Roen—"
"An hour." He found a fallen tree at the edge of the path and lowered himself onto it, careful
not to jar his injured side. "We can't afford more than that. Not out here."
Mirelle didn't argue. She sat beside him, pulling out what remained of their food—a heel of
bread, some dried meat, a handful of nuts they'd gathered from a dead orchard two days
back. Not enough. Never enough.
They ate in silence, watching the fog roll across the moorland. The silence here was different
from Ashford. In the city, silence meant danger—someone planning, someone watching,
someone waiting for you to make a mistake. Out here, silence just meant emptiness.
Absence. The world holding its breath.
"We're being followed," Mirelle said quietly.
Roen didn't look back. He'd felt it too—a prickle between his shoulder blades that had
nothing to do with the cold. Someone had been trailing them since yesterday, staying just far
enough to remain a shape in the fog, close enough that they never quite disappeared.
"How long?"
"Since the crossroads. Maybe before." She kept her voice low, her eyes on the road ahead.
Mirelle had a gift for noticing things—a survival trait honed by years of having nowhere safe
to sleep. "Two figures. Maybe three. They're good."
"Good enough to track us through this?" The fog was thick enough to swallow sound, let
alone footprints. Roen had chosen this route deliberately, following old game trails that
wound through dead forests and dried riverbeds. No main roads. No villages.
"Good enough." She glanced at him. "Imperial?"
Possible. Commander Vald had resources, and she'd seemed the type to hold a grudge. But
it could also be bandits, drawn by the same instinct that told predators which animals were
wounded. Or it could be something else entirely—something connected to the sphere in his
pack.
"We don't assume," Roen said. "We find out."
He stopped walking and turned, scanning the fog behind them. For a long moment, there
was nothing but gray silence. Then, slowly, a shape resolved itself: a rider on horseback,
perhaps a hundred meters back. As Roen watched, another shape appeared beside the first.
Then a third.
Two riders. Three. Following at a distance. Patient.
"They want us to know," Mirelle said quietly. "They're not trying to hide."
Which meant they were confident. And confidence, in the Moors, usually came from power.
"We run, they catch us. We fight, we're outmatched." Roen's mind raced through options and
discarded each one. "We talk."
"Talk?"
"Find out what they want. Maybe we can negotiate." He didn't believe it, but talking bought
time. And time was the only resource they had.
He pulled off his pack and set it on a flat stone, keeping the pouch with the sphere close to
his body. Then he turned to face the riders and waited.
They approached slowly, horses picking their way through the rough terrain. The first rider
was a woman, perhaps thirty, with close-cropped dark hair and a scar that ran from her left
eye to her jaw. She wore the practical clothes of a mercenary—leather armor over dark
cloth, a sword at her hip. But what caught Roen's attention was the shimmer around her
hands.
Faint threads, red and gold, weaving together.
A dual-talent Weaver. Rare. Dangerous.
The second rider was older, maybe fifty, with a gray beard and a face weathered by decades
of hard living. He carried no visible weapons, but the way he sat his horse spoke of military
training. Behind him, a third figure came into view—a young man, barely more than a boy,
leading a pack mule laden with supplies.
"Roen of Ashford," the woman said. She didn't dismount. "You've made quite a mess."
"I try." He kept his voice light. "And you are?"
"Dessa Keth. My colleagues call me Blade." The scar twisted as she smiled. "I've been hired
to find you. Consider me... an interested party."
Roen's hand drifted toward his knife. "Hired by who?"
"That's between me and my client." She studied him with eyes that missed nothing. "You're
thread-blind. Your companion is thread-blind. You're carrying something that interests
powerful people, and you have no idea what it is. Do you?"
"I know it's worth killing for." Roen's voice was steady. "That's enough."