The first thing Evelyn noticed as they crested the bluff overlooking Vaelbridge was how wrong the silence felt.
No birds. No traders' bells. Not even the distant barking of those wolfish mutts the outer farmers kept to watch the fencelines.
The village below should have been alive with mid-morning clamor—guild-tithes collected, harvests traded, gossip flung like grain in the wind.
Instead, thin smoke curled from half-collapsed roofs and drifted up like ghost breath.
Torren stepped beside her, eyes narrowing as he surveyed the shattered buildings, the breached palisades. "This wasn't bandits."
"I know," Evelyn whispered. Her hand went to her chest, where the shard lay hidden beneath her tunic, bandaged and wrapped with care but no longer dormant. It pulsed faintly, the rhythm of a second heartbeat.
Torren crouched, scanning for signs—tracks, motion, anything. "Too quiet. If the beasts came this far north…"
"They shouldn't have. Not past the Warden's markers," Evelyn said.
But the wind carried the scent of burned hay, spilled oil, and something else—flesh. Not fresh. A few days old, and already rotting.
They descended slowly, past broken signs and scorched root barrels. Near the main road's fork, a cart lay overturned, its axle split, wheels missing. Crows perched along the fence line, silent and still.
Evelyn stepped carefully around a scorched circle in the earth. Bones. Not human—but not clean, either. Ribs warped like they'd tried to split open from the inside. Echoed, maybe. Or something worse.
A whistle. Torren's signal. She turned to find him crouched at the edge of what had been Vaelbridge's meeting hall—now a blackened husk, roof half caved in.
He waved her close, then pointed down into the ruin. Under a scorched beam, something moved. Not much—just a twitch.
They hurried, lifting timber, ash, and collapsed beams with effort and caution. Beneath it all lay a boy, perhaps nine, soot-covered and half-conscious. His arms were burned, but not charred, and his breathing—rasping though it was—held rhythm.
His eyes opened slightly. "The… lights… sang."
Evelyn knelt beside him. "You're safe now."
The boy's pupils shrank. "You've got… the fire." His voice cracked on the last word, then faded as he passed out.
Torren exhaled. "He needs salve. Water. Maybe more than we can give."
"I have to try."
She placed her hand near his forehead. The shard within her flared—responding, not to her will, but to her desperation. A flicker of heat traveled down her wrist. She felt the echo of a structure—wounded flesh, bruised nerves—and the hint of something deeper: a fraying tether that ran along his core.
The shard surged.
Images. Screams. Fire rising from the ground—not falling from above—and a creature with too many arms, dragging itself through flame.
She pulled back with a cry, heart hammering.
Torren steadied her. "You saw something again."
"I didn't mean to."
"You never do."
There was no anger in his tone—only worry.
Behind them, a voice rasped. "So. Another core-touched, come to pick the bones?"
They spun.
A man leaned against the broken doorway, wrapped in scavenged leathers. Old Guild sigil, faded and half-clawed off. His right eye was covered by a dull metal plate. In his left hand, a staff made from twisted heartpine.
"Who are you?" Torren stepped forward, blade half-drawn.
The man grinned. "A scavenger. A liar. A few other things, depending on who you ask. But today? A witness."
"To what?" Evelyn asked.
The man's eye didn't blink. "To the first village north of the Breachfall to fall without warning. To a creature that walked like a man but smelled like rot. To a song in the wind that made the weak slit their own throats and the strong turn their blades on friends."
Evelyn's mouth went dry. "Did you fight it?"
He shook his head. "I ran."
A pause. "And I saw it whisper something to the sky—before the flames came."
Behind them, the boy stirred and groaned. Evelyn touched his forehead again, slower this time. The shard didn't flare—but something deep in her chest still itched, like a fire not yet fully stoked.
Torren asked, "Do you have a name, scavenger?"
The man smiled, showing a missing tooth. "You can call me Vareth."