Keshik knew the first rule.

  No sound. No echo. Not even the brush of claws against stone.

  He moved like smoke through the cavern, every step light and certain. The moss that clung to the basalt floor gave him cover, muffling his weight. The air was damp here, rich with the sharp taste of mushrooms and wet earth.

  His body was wrapped in thin strips of leather and bone, little more than armor but enough for a kobold warrior. A hood of crow feathers shadowed his face, the faint rustle barely audible even in the close walls of the passage. On his back hung two blades, curved and cruel. One glimmered with an obsidian tip, sharp enough to cut skin at a glance. The other was stranger, its pale sheen neither stone nor metal. Bone, perhaps. Or something else best left unnamed.

  Behind him came the sound he wished he didn’t have to hear: the quick, uneven breaths of Slit-Tongue, his second.

  The younger kobold was loyal enough and quick with his hands, but quicker with his mouth. Keshik would have preferred silence, but he tolerated the boy. For now.

  The tunnel narrowed, then opened into a wider hollow. Roots broke through the stone, twisted like the ribs of some buried beast. Keshik crouched near one, narrowing his eyes. Moonlight spilled down through a jagged crack above, falling across a small glade hidden within the mountain’s bones. Pale mushrooms lined the edges, their glow faint. An owl gave a low call, then fell quiet again.

  Keshik pressed his palm against the moss. It was damp and cold, but he felt something else. Something unsettled.

  “She was here,” he murmured.

  Slit-Tongue crept closer, lowering himself beside his leader. “The dryad?”

  Keshik nodded. “Look at the leaves.”

  Slit-Tongue leaned in. A patch of ivy clung to the roots nearby. The leaves were curled, edges pulled inward as though listening.

  “That only happens when they’re close,” Keshik said. His voice carried no doubt.

  Slit-Tongue shifted nervously. “What do we do now? The master said we were only to watch. No fighting unless they strike first.”

  Keshik didn’t respond immediately. He lifted a hand to the bone-colored blade at his shoulder, letting his claws trace its edge. The weapon gave off a faint hum, one only he seemed able to hear. It was not a sound so much as a memory, like something old whispering through the cracks of time.

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  At last, Keshik spoke. “Nezzarod does not send us only to watch.”

  Slit-Tongue frowned, his tongue flicking nervously between sharp teeth. “But he said—”

  “He said the forest is awake,” Keshik interrupted. His eyes glinted. “He said it notices when we step too hard.”

  “And so?”

  Keshik bared his teeth in a thin smile. “So we do not step hard.”

  He rose to his feet and walked toward a dead trunk that leaned at the glade’s edge. Drawing a claw, he carved a curling symbol into the bark. A flame, coiled in on itself, with a single eye at its center. As soon as he finished, the lines shimmered faintly before fading into the wood.

  Slit-Tongue stared. “What if the dryads find that?”

  “They won’t,” Keshik said.

  Slit-Tongue fell silent. His gaze darted to the shadows between the trees. For a moment, the darkness there seemed to move, heavy and shifting, as though something vast and unseen watched them both. His throat tightened.

  Keshik crouched low again, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The master commands the shadows. They move for him as fire moves through dry grass.”

  Slit-Tongue swallowed. He wanted to ask if that was truly power, or only the illusion of it, but he didn’t dare.

  Keshik looked directly at him now. “Do you know why he chose me for this task? Not because I kill quickly. Not because I run fastest. He chose me because I wait. Because I listen.”

  He tapped a claw to his own chest. “The others rush in with teeth bared. They cannot see what hides in silence. I can.”

  Slit-Tongue shifted uneasily. “So what do we do now?”

  Keshik turned his eyes back to the trees. A faint green shimmer ran through the canopy high above, the dryads’ mark of presence. It was not light exactly, but a strange sense of being watched, of weight pressing down on them from living wood.

  “They believe their roots and their birds protect them,” Keshik said quietly. “They believe their songs can ward away the dark. But they do not understand. You cannot hide from what leaves no trail.”

  His words hung in the damp air.

  Slit-Tongue felt a shiver crawl down his spine. He wanted to protest, to remind Keshik that they had not been ordered to strike, but the older kobold’s eyes silenced him. They gleamed with something both sharp and distant.

  Keshik finally rose. “The dryads still dream of peace. But he dreams of fire and void. And soon, the forest will wake to reckoning.”

  He stepped lightly into the undergrowth, body slipping between shadows as though he had always belonged there. His crow-feather hood disappeared into the dark.

  Slit-Tongue lingered for a moment longer, staring at the marked tree. The symbol no longer glowed, but he felt its presence, like a brand pressed into his mind. He wondered if the dryads would ever find it. He wondered what would happen if they did.

  Then he hurried after Keshik, though slower, his heart unsettled.