Lavender forced a shaky exhale. “Fine. Then tell me how to shut if off.”

  Zemmal’s eyes gleamed. You cannot shut it off, he said simply. You can only learn to carry it.

  Her throat tightened. “That’s not helpful.”

  It is only the truth.

  Brute stepped closer, bringing his solid weight into her periphery, giving her something to anchor to. “Ground,” he said. “Like you were trying. But you can’t do it with force. You must do it with permission.”

  Lavender blinked. “Permission?”

  Brute nodded toward the soil and stone beneath them. “Ask it.”

  She swallowed hard and looked away, jaw clenched. She hated how humiliated she felt. Hated that she didn’t understand her own body anymore. Hated that even here, in the middle of nowhere, the instinct to obey – Authority’s training – still lived in her bones.

  She knelt reluctantly, pressing both palms flat against the ground. The hum was immediate. Lavender closed her eyes.

  She pictured fire. Pictured lightning. Two beasts inside her, snapping at each other. Desperate for dominance. She tried to imagine them lying down. Tried to imagine them becoming water instead of flame. To imagine them flowing into the earth rather than up her spine.

  Her breath slowed. The hum softened. Not gone. She knew now it would never be gone. But quieted, at least.

  Lavender opened her eyes. Her hands no longer burned. The scars still glowed faintly, but the glow was dim. Like sunlight rather than fire and lightning. She sat back on her heels surprised.

  Brute’s ears lifted slightly. “Good.”

  Lavender’s mouth twisted. “Don’t be so proud”

  “I’m relieved,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

  Zemmal’s gaze remained steady on the two.

  That is how you will survive what is ahead, he said. Not by overpowering it. By aligning with it.

  Lavender stood again, slower this time. Moving deliberately, testing her balance. The dizziness had retreated. The world felt marginally less like it wanted to split open.

  “So ahead is what? A valley? Then what?” Lavender asked, knowing the answer would be unsatisfying.

  Zemmal’s eyes flickered toward the distant slope finally breaking the horizon of the forest. It was Brute who responded.

  “A threshold.”

  Lavender huffed. “That’s not an answer, and you know it.”

  “It’s the only one that matters right now,” he replied. “Because once we cross it, there’s no pretending you can go back to being the girl in the barrens.”

  Her chest squeezed. A flicker of grief. Sharp and quick like her father’s name being spoken aloud. It had been Conner. Tears pricked her eyes.

  “I’m not that girl anymore,” she said softly. “Not after today.”

  Brute didn’t argue. He only moved closer, as if to shield her from the truth she’d just spoken. They began moving again.

  The forest shifted with them. Not parting in a dramatic sweep but subtly yielding. The path ahead grew clearer the more Lavender held her breath steady. When her thoughts began to spiral, thorns seemed to snag at her clothing and low branches dipped into her way. When she forced herself into calm, the undergrowth softened, moss thickening underfoot like a quiet road.

  “This place listens,” she murmured.

  Zemmal’s voice rumbled from behind. It always has.

  Lavender glanced back at him.

  He was limping less now, though his leg still carried a faint stiffness. His scales caught the dim light in muted flashes. Even injured, he looked like a living mountain. A force that could not be negotiated with. Yet here he was, following her lead, allowing her pace to set theirs.

  It should have made her feel powerful. Instead, it made her feel like bait.

  They descended gradually, the terrain sloping toward that impossible basin Lavender had glimpsed earlier. The air grew heavier with mist. The hum beneath the ground strengthened. Not sharper, but deeper, like the valley itself had a pulse, and they were approaching its heart.

  Then, Brute stopped so abruptly Lavender nearly collided with him.

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  “What…”

  “Hush,” Brute breathed. Something in his tone made Lavender shut her mouth immediately.

  Zemmal halted instantly, body taut. Lavender froze, scanning the area. At first, she heard nothing. Saw nothing.

  Then she noticed what Brute had; a pattern in the silence. Not natural quiet. Not peaceful stillness. It was the kind of stillness that came when animals hid. When prey knew that predators were near.

  Lavender’s mouth went dry. “Authority?”

  Brute’s nostrils flared. “Not close.”

  But present. Zemmal’s eyes narrowed.

  Lavender’s heart tried to hammer itself into her throat. “How can they be present,” she whispered. “We’re weeks out.”

  Brute’s voice was low. “They patrol farther than people in the barrens think.”

  She swallowed hard. “Why? How?”

  Zemmal answered, voice gravelly with disgust. Because they desire what lies here. Desire it and fear it.

  Her gaze snapped to him. “So they know?”

  Not fully, Zemmal’s tail flicked once. But they have lost soldiers in these woods. They have lost magic users. Machines that should not fail. They have felt the valley and called it a threat.

  Lavender’s stomach twisted. “So they send patrols.”

  Yes. And they will not hesitate to kill what they do not understand. Unfortunately, we’re probably already targets of interest. They understand us enough to want us dead.

  Lavender’s hands tingled, her scars warming with instinctive alarm.

  Brute stepped closer to her leg, almost touching, solid as a wall. “Control yourself.”

  “I am.”

  “No,” Brute said sharply. “You’re about to lie. And this place will hear you.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for half a second and forced her breath to slow again. Forced the fire back down. The lightning to stop striking. When she opened her eyes, she saw it. The faintest flicker of light between the trees ahead. Not bioluminescence. Not spores.

  Artificial. A lantern. There were more, two, maybe three. Moving in a slow line.

  Lavender crouched instinctively, pulling herself tighter as if she could hide from Authority’s gaze. Brute lowered beside her, silent. Zemmal folded himself down with a grace that should have been impossible for the situation. And for something so large. His body melted into shadow and mist like he belonged there.

  Staring at him, stunned, he met her gaze once. Then looked away, attention on the moving lights. The lanterns grew closer.

  The lanterns grew closer. Lavender could hear voices now. Muffled. Human.

  “…told you the readings spiked…” one voice said.

  “Old sensors don’t work out here,” another snapped.

  A third, colder voice came. “Keep your mouth shut and your weapon ready. If you see anything that doesn’t belong, you shoot first.”

  Lavender’s blood ran cold. Her hand twitched toward her knife, but she thought better of it. She’d need to be too close.

  Brute’s voice came into her mind, steady and firm. “Still. Breath.”

  Lavender breathed. The forest breathed with her.

  The lanterns passed within fifty yards. Lavender could make out the silhouettes between the trunks. Three soldiers in dark Authority gear, faces half-covered, rifles slung and ready. A fourth moved behind them with a bulkier pack, and she caught a glint of metal.

  Equipment. Some kind of sensor rig. A reader. Something that meant to detect magic.

  Her throat tightened, and her scars warmed again, betraying her fear. The soldier carrying the rig stopped. Lavender’s lungs locked. The rig hummed faintly. A tiny whine, like a mosquito in the dark.

  One of the soldiers glanced around, uneasy. “You feel that?”

  “Shut up.”

  The rig’s light flickered, dim, then bright, then dim again. Lavender’s heart slammed. Brute’s hackles rose. Zemmal’s eyes narrowed to slits. The soldier holding the rig tilted it slightly, scanning the trees. The device beeped once, soft and questioning.

  Lavender pressed her palms flat to the ground, like Brute had taught her. Ask it, she thought desperately. Help me.

  The hum beneath her answered, and the device’s light sputtered. The soldier frowned.

  “It’s glitching.”

  Another barked, irritated. “Then fix it.”

  The rig whined louder, then abruptly died. Again, there was darkness but for the spores and foliage. The soldier smacked it. “What the hell…”

  The cold-voiced leader snapped, “Enough. We log it and move. This place eats power. Everyone knows that. We have to find that freak and her beasts. Let’s go.” They started walking again.

  Lavender did not move.

  Brute did not move.

  Zemmal did not move.

  The lanterns drifted away, swallowed by mist and trees. Until the forest reclaimed the last trace of them. Only then did Lavender exhale, and the breath shook. She looked at Brute, eyes wide. “They almost…”

  “I know,” Brute said softly.

  Lavender’s voice broke. “They’re here.”

  Zemmal’s voice rumbled, low and dangerous. They have always been here. You simply did not know where to look.

  Lavender swallowed, forcing herself not to spiral. “We have to keep moving,” she whispered. “Before they loop back.” Brute nodded in agreement. She stood, legs stiff, and for the first time in her life she understood something with brutal clarity: Authority was not a city. Authority was not a wall. They were a hunger that followed you into the dark.

  They moved faster now, but more carefully. Lavender kept her breathing steady, kept her mind quiet. When fear rose, she pushed it down not by force but by grounding. Palms briefly brushing stone and trunk, a silent request to the earth.

  The valley drew closer. Mist thickened until Lavender could barely see ten feet ahead. The hum beneath her feet grew so deep it became almost soothing. Like a lullaby sung by something too old to have words. The trees thinned.

  And the world opened.

  The valley yawned before them; wide and impossibly deep, ringed by mountains that seemed to lean inward. Light filtered through clouds in the fractured beams. The mist coiled along the basin floor in slow currents that moved like living things.

  Lavender stopped at the edge, breath caught in her throat.

  It shouldn’t be here. And yet it was.

  Brute stepped beside her, silent. Zemmal came up behind, and Lavender felt his massive presence tighten, as if even he respected the boundary of what lay beyond.

  “The threshold. It’s beyond the valley,” Lavender whispered. Though she wasn’t sure why she knew the word.

  Brute’s voice was quiet, “yes.”

  Lavender’s scars warmed again. Gentle this time, like a hand pressed to her palm rather than a burn. The path downward was there. Black stone half-buried in earth. Leading into the mist. And somewhere in the center of the valley, beyond what Lavender could see, something waited with patience. A predator that had never known hunger lurked at the depths. The depths they would need to cross to reach the threshold.

  She took a slow step forward. The ground responded. Not violently. Just enough to be unmistakable. A ripple beneath her boots, spreading outward like a heartbeat through stone. Her throat closed around itself.

  She looked back once toward the forest they’d come through. Toward the direction Authority would crawl from if it found their trail. Toward the life she’d already lost. Then she looked ahead.

  “Alright,” she breathed. Voice thin, but steady. “Then show me what comes next.”

  And the valley listened.

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