The wind at Graythorn’s borders carried the faint scent of old iron.

  Not fresh blood—older. The kind that had sunk into the soil, stained bark, and never quite washed away no matter how many rains came after.

  Aelric Vael stepped through the village gates without waiting to be announced.

  Tall and lean in silver-and-black scout captain armor, he moved with the unhurried, unbothered confidence of someone who had long ago stopped being impressed by threats. A light-blue mantle hung from his shoulder, marked with the sigil of Ophora’s elite scouts. It fluttered once in the breeze and then settled.

  Kaela Windthorn walked beside him, teal cloak trailing, white-blonde hair whipping in the wind. Her eyes never stopped moving—quick, sharp, weighing every rooftop, alley, and shadow.

  Villagers watched them from doorways and windows, whispers fluttering like nervous birds.

  Aelric didn’t blame them.

  Places like this were never meant to attract men like him.

  He paused inside the gate and closed his eyes for a breath.

  There. Faint, but unmistakable.

  The air tasted wrong—thinned and warped, like fabric stretched too far. Residual Aether clung to the earth, humming at the edge of perception.

  “Kaela,” he murmured.

  She shut her eyes and felt outward.

  A moment later her lashes snapped open. “That’s Revenant residue.”

  The word rippled through the villagers eavesdropping nearby. A few flinched. One crossed himself.

  Even Aelric’s brow creased.

  “A Revenant,” he said quietly. “This far from the barrier line.”

  Kaela shook her head in disbelief. “That shouldn’t be possible. Not this far south.”

  “It didn’t come from the line,” Aelric replied. “Whatever happened started here.”

  He walked deeper into the village.

  The ground bore faint cracks radiating in a wide circle near the square. Not natural breaks—impact fractures. On the outskirts, the underbrush and young trees were torn and scorched in jagged sweeps, like something huge had thrashed and died there.

  Kaela knelt beside one fissure and pressed her fingers to the dirt. “Something hit the ground hard. Not a falling tree. Concentrated force.”

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  Aelric crouched beside her and brushed the dust aside.

  “No,” he said. “Someone.”

  He stood and followed the pattern of damage outward—slashed trunks in long arcs, claw marks furrowing deep into bark, charred patches where corruption had burned out. Finally, he stopped at a shallow depression in the earth, the faint outline of knees and hands pressed into cracked dirt.

  Aelric lowered himself again and put two fingers at the center of that imprint.

  A ghost of power pulsed up his arm. Not demonic. Not stable. Layered—like several different currents all knotted together.

  Kaela saw the slight flicker of surprise he tried to smother.

  “Captain?”

  He straightened. “The Revenant didn’t make this crater,” he said. “A human did.”

  The villagers nearby shifted uneasily.

  “Sir?” Kaela asked under her breath. “No hunter does that.”

  “Exactly.”

  The doors of the meeting hall creaked open.

  Elder Rowan stepped out, leaning heavily on his staff. His hair looked whiter than the last time Aelric had seen him, his lined face carved deeper by recent nights.

  “Aelric Vael,” Rowan said quietly. “I was told Ophora felt it.”

  Aelric inclined his head. “We feel any Revenant death within a hundred miles. I didn’t expect the wave to lead me to Graythorn.”

  “Nor did I,” Rowan replied.

  They studied one another for a heartbeat—the old man with tired eyes, the young captain carrying too many miles in his.

  “You had casualties,” Aelric said.

  Rowan’s fingers tightened around the staff. “Four.”

  Kaela’s jaw set. “And the fifth?”

  Aelric looked at Rowan. “There was a fifth, wasn’t there?”

  Rowan hesitated.

  “The fifth… survived,” he said at last.

  Kaela stared. “Survived a Revenant?”

  “That is how the story will be told,” Rowan answered. “Though it is not the whole truth.”

  “Where is he?” Aelric asked.

  “Gone,” Rowan said. His gaze drifted past the gate, to the forest roads beyond. “He left at dawn. I… sent him away.”

  “Why?” Kaela demanded. “A survivor of a Revenant should be protected, trained—”

  “—or broken,” Rowan said softly. “Fear does both. Power too.”

  Kaela glanced at Aelric. “Is he—?”

  Rowan shook his head, frustration and helplessness tightening his features.

  “I don’t know what he is,” he said. “Only that he is not like the hunters you train or the boys I’ve raised.”

  Aelric’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Explain.”

  Rowan’s shoulders sagged.

  “What happened here was not chance, and it was not luck,” he said. “A boy stood where no boy should have. Power answered. Too much for one person, all at once.”

  He swallowed.

  “When he woke,” Rowan went on quietly, “the air around him felt wrong. Cold and crowded. And when he looked at me, for a moment I did not see just Joren. I saw… other eyes looking out with him.” His voice lowered. “So I did what I thought might keep him—and us—alive. I told him to leave before anyone decided he was a monster.”

  Aelric’s gaze slid toward the road out of the village.

  “Name,” he said.

  “Joren,” Rowan replied. “He has no recorded family name.”

  The name settled in the space between them like a small stone dropped in deep water.

  “Where does his trail lead?” Aelric asked.

  Rowan nodded toward the eastern road. “He walks with his ghosts. Toward whatever will break him or make him.”

  Aelric turned away.

  “Captain Vael,” Rowan called quietly.

  He paused.

  “When you find him…” Rowan said, “…do not corner him. He will try not to fight. But if he believes there is no way out, I fear something else may answer in his place.”

  Aelric studied him for a silent breath, then inclined his head.

  He looked down the eastern path, feeling the faint tug of that strange, knotted energy.

  “Kaela,” he said. “We move. The boy hasn’t gotten far.”

  Kaela rolled her shoulders, eager and wary all at once. “Thought you’d never say it.”

  They left Graythorn together, following the trail of a boy who had walked out of a Revenant’s shadow still breathing.

  The hunt had begun.