Shadows Before the Storm
Mira awoke with a scream lodged deep in her throat, her heart hammering against her ribs as if trying to break free. Cold sweat plastered her to the bedroll. Alaric was already at her side, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes glowing faintly gold in the predawn dark.
"What did you see?" he asked.
She stared past him, through the canvas of their makeshift tent, eyes wide and unblinking. Her voice, when it came, was more breath than sound.
"Chains. So many chains. Wrapped around... not people—things. Something beneath. Old. Starved. And it saw me."
Alaric's expression hardened, jaw tight with instinctive dread. He sat back, the flickering oil-lamp beside him casting long shadows across the tent wall. Mira pulled a cloak around her shoulders and tried to still the tremors in her fingers.
"It spoke to me," she said after a long silence. "Not in words. In feeling. Rage. Not fresh... ancient. Betrayal buried under centuries."
Alaric ran a hand down his face, rising to his feet. He didn't need the Dreamwalker's interpretation to understand what she had touched.
"They've opened the Vaults," he said grimly.
She looked up at him, pupils still trembling. "I thought they were myths."
He shook his head. "I didn't. My father once whispered their names while drunk on bloodwine. Called them the 'First Failed.' Creatures made before the Orders were even forged. Things the Council created and couldn't control. So they buried them in spells and ash."
"And now they're breaking those seals," Mira said, voice brittle. "To turn the tide. To burn us all."
Alaric paced, every muscle coiled with tension. Outside, the camp was beginning to stir—distant clangs, snorts of horses, the low murmur of restless sentries.
"I need Caelen," he said. "And the scouts. We need to know where the first breach is. If it's begun, someone near the vaults will already be seeing the signs."
Mira stood, still pale but steady. "I'll go with you."
Alaric turned to her. "You're not well."
"I walked the edges of that darkness and came back, Alaric. I'm the only one who felt its mind. That gives me something no scout has."
He didn't argue.
Instead, he stepped closer, placing a hand over hers. "Then we move now. We ride for Emberholt. If there's any place the Council will test their first unleashed weapon—it's there. Half-loyal, strategically vital, and already stirring with rebellion."
Mira nodded, determination blooming beneath the remnants of fear. "And if it's already too late?"
Alaric's voice dropped low, his wolf rising beneath the words.
"Then we show them that we're not the prey in this war. We end their god before it remembers how to walk."
They stepped out into the morning together, the first slivers of sunlight catching on the mountain ridges. Below them, the valley stretched out—mist-veiled and unaware.
But not for long.
In the distance, to the east, birds scattered suddenly from the canopy as if startled by something unseen. The wind shifted. The scent it carried was not of storm or earth.
It was ash.