The mist had begun to thin as they reached the edge of the Baron’s lands, but the silence remained thick.

  Garen, bowed under the crushing weight of Nihil, was the first to stop. He stopped because his mind could not make sense of the road ahead.

  "Architects’ mercy..." he breathed, the vapor of his breath mingling with the fog.

  The Gate Between was gone.

  The ancient stone arch that marked the boundary between safety and the ruins, the very limit of the Baron’s authority, had been erased.

  Garen stepped forward, the heavy sword clanking against his back. He reached out and touched one of the ruined towers. It had been sheared apart. As if a giant blade had swung down and simply deleted the structure.

  “What…” Garen stammered, looking at the massive blocks of stone scattered like children’s toys. “What did this? An animal?”

  He looked at Selene, expecting to see fear. Instead, she just stepped over a piece of shattered iron grating, her boots crunching over the debris. She barely glanced at the destruction.

  Selis followed. She adjusted the pine coffin on her shoulder with unsettling calm and clicked her tongue, urging the horse onward.

  “It seems fitting,” Selis said softly, her voice barely rising above the wind.

  Garen looked at her, his eyes wide. “Look at the stone. It’s been sliced like bread. This ain’t natural.”

  “The Baron fell. It is only right that his gate falls with him,” she concluded.

  Garen stared at them. They were walking through what remained of the gates as if it were a garden path. A cold sweat prickled his neck, nothing to do with the temperature. He realized, with a sinking feeling, that whatever had happened here, these women were not afraid of it.

  Selene paused a few steps ahead. She saw the dried blood on the ground. In its dull reflection, she saw for a brief moment the final actions of the two men who had stood at the gate, and with it, the silhouette of a woman with red eyes smiling back at them.

  A shift in the wind tore a hole in the fog, revealing the valley one last time.

  From here, she could see the edges of the burned Baron’s manor on the distant hill. It looked smaller now, abandoned. But her eyes were drawn to the clock tower rising from its center.

  For eighteen years, that clock had been the heartbeat of Veilmouth.

  Now, its hands were frozen.

  There was no sound. No movement. Just a dead face staring out over a village that was slowly waking to a different world than the one they knew.

  Selene stared at it. She felt a strange, hollow pang in her chest, not quite grief, but the finality of a door closing. Like a new chapter in her world was about to begin.

  “Selene,” Selis’s voice cut through her thoughts, gentle but firm.

  Selene blinked. Selis was standing in front of her, waiting. Garen looked back and forth between them, his face pale, waiting to be told this was a nightmare.

  "Let the dead keep their time. We must find our own."

  Selene looked back at the frozen clock one last time, then nodded.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Come on, Garen. Stop staring at the rocks.”

  Garen swallowed hard, hitching the massive sword higher on his back. He took one last look at the impossibly smooth cut in the stone, then hurried to catch up.

  “Right… right,” he muttered, stepping over the line where the gate used to be. “To the ruins, then.”

  Selene turned her back on Veilmouth and faced the dark, rising slopes of the Veilspine Range.

  The fog finally lifted. The terrain had turned upward hours ago, the cobbled roads of Veilmouth giving way to natural trails and sharp limestone ridges.

  At the front of the group came Selis, one hand gripping the lead rope of the, overloaded packhorse, the other balancing the pine coffin on her shoulder. Next was Selene, the second coffin resting easily against her neck, her stride eating up the incline. And finally came Garen.

  The porter was bent low, his boots scraping for purchase on the slate. Nihil was a dead weight tempting gravity with every step, the leather straps digging into his chest.

  "This In't right, we’re drifting," Garen wheezed, adjusting the massive blade to keep it from scraping the rocks. "The ruin passes are not this way. This... this is to high. There’s no road up here."

  “We aren’t looking for a road, Garen. We’re making one,” Selene said without turning.

  Selis paused to consult a heavy parchment map she had unrolled against the horse's flank. "The elevation is necessary. The Circle has doubled the patrols on the western roads. If we stay low, we will be seen."

  Garen wiped sweat from his eyes, craning his neck to look up at the jagged peaks disappearing into the clouds. He had spent his whole life seeing Ardent Crest and Thalen’s Crown as distant shapes on the horizon, but he had never stood in their shadow. Up close, the sheer scale of the rock was crushing.

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  He wheezed. “There’s nothing up this way—just jagged stone and bad air.”

  Selene slowed, falling back until she was walking beside him. She pointed a gloved hand toward something looming far ahead, past the tallest peaks.

  "Do you see those spires? The dark ones?"

  Garen squinted against the wind. "Aye. Look like broken teeth."

  "They call them the Black Rocks," Selene said, her voice flat and serious. "Most people in valley think they’re just ugly peaks."

  Garen looked at her, confused. "Then what are they?"

  “You saw the Baron’s gate destroyed. That was the boundary of everything we know, at least for most of the Lowtown people,” she explained. “Since the founding of Veilmouth, the Circle has excavated within a specific area. Safe limits.”

  “But the truth is, beyond those rocks, nobody in the valley knows what lies there. Any human born in this valley who crosses it simply disappears.”

  Garen paled, the blood draining from his weathered face. His grip tightened on the sword’s straps. “I thought we were walking toward the ruins below, but you’re saying we’re going to…?”

  “We’re walking out of the cage,” Selene corrected, her green eyes hard. “Until we cross that line, the Circle is the threat. But once we pass those stones, everything is uncharted.”

  “I do not know what lies beyond,” she said. “I fear it as well. But to protect that which we know, we must cross it. Whatever waits for us, we cannot afford to stop.”

  She hesitated, then added more quietly, “I cannot do this without you, Garen. I trust you to continue.”

  Garen swallowed. For a moment, he said nothing. He had seen that look before, not in the scholars of the Athenaeum, with their cold eyes and careful distance, but in Eldric. It was the look of someone who would never ask another to walk a path she would not take herself.

  He nodded once.

  “You’re that kind of person,” he said, his voice rough but steady. “And like him, you’ve never treated me like I was less than you.”

  He tightened his grip on the straps of Nihil and took a breath.

  “So I’ll walk it with you.”

  By mid-afternoon, they had reached a ridge overlooking the primary excavation site. They were high enough to be hidden by the distance, but close enough to see the ruins in the earth.

  Selene signaled for a halt.

  She walked to the edge of the precipice. The wind whipped her hair across her face. Below, the ruins were a hive of panic. Even from this height, she could make out the frantic movement of the Circle’s laborers: new scholars doing what they were bred to do, torches burning in broad daylight as if to ward off shadows.

  For a heartbeat, the chaos below blurred. She remembered the warmth of the sun on that last afternoon, and the breathless thrill of walking toward the grand entrance with Eldric. She remembered the innocence of it, believing she was just a student on the verge of discovery, unaware it was the last hour of her normal life.

  Behind her, she heard the heavy crunch of boots. Garen had dropped his pack and Nihil, and stood staring out at the peaks.

  His face held the same expression she had seen during her time with Eldric, a look of pleading. He watched the mountains not with awe, but with the exhaustion of a man who realizes how small he is against the stone. He was measuring the distance that remained, calculating the pain in his knees and the burn in his lungs.

  “It looks so different from up here. Everything looks so small,” Garen murmured.

  “Just like our world, Garen,” Selene said softly.

  She touched her chest, where her heart beat firm and slow, a rhythm dictated by the thing in her blood, not by exertion. She missed the breathless excitement of the girl who had stood here before. The woman standing here now was someone else entirely.

  “I’m sorry, Garen,” Selene said, turning her back on the excavation and the memory of Eldric. “But we must press on—before the light fails.”

  Night made the mountains feel like the bottom of a deep ocean. The silence was absolute, broken only by the crackle of the small, concealed fire Selis had built within the shelter of a ruined, roofless stone tower.

  The two coffins lay on the ground.

  With a creak of wood, the lids were pushed aside.

  Sebastian sat up first. He rolled his shoulders, the movement stiff, before tilting his head sharply to the side. A dry, crisp pop of vertebrae echoed in the quiet ruin.

  He exhaled slowly, then fixed his dark red eyes on Selene where she sat by the fire.

  "You have a turbulent stride, Selene," he drawled, rubbing the side of his neck. "I believe I felt every individual stone on that path. Try to glide more tomorrow, would you?"

  Astraea rose a moment later, ignoring them both. She stretched her arms above her head, her spine arching with a feline fluidity that made Garen quickly look down at his hardtack and cheese.

  “I didn’t know the mountains could be this silent,” Selis said as she handed a strip of dried meat to Garen.

  The horse, tethered in the corner, stamped nervously, its eyes rolling white as the two vampires stepped out of their boxes.

  They all ate, or at least the humans did. Garen tore into the bread and cheese with the ferocity of a starving man, and even Selis ate with unexpected intensity.

  Selene sat apart from them on a fallen pillar. She watched Garen chew, watched the pulse in his jaw work.

  Her stomach tightened. A sharp, hollow cramp twisted inside her. It wasn’t hunger for food, but a thudding, headache-inducing need. The fog in her mind was starting to thicken, the edges of her vision tinting red. The proximity of the humans, their warmth, the sound of blood rushing through their veins, was becoming a distraction.

  She stood up abruptly. The movement drew eyes.

  "Astraea," Selene said. Her voice was brittle. "Walk with me."

  Astraea looked to her, a slow, knowing smile spreading across her face. Her eyes drifted to Selene’s throat.

  "Of course," Astraea purred.

  Selene walked out of the ruin camp, into the darkness of the tree line. She went far enough that the firelight was just a dim glow, far enough that Garen wouldn't hear them.

  She spun around. Astraea was right behind her, standing on the bare mountain soil, her armored coat open at the collar. She looked expectant. There was a flush to her pale cheeks, a glimmer of twisted excitement in her crimson eyes. She knew what was coming. She enjoyed the submission of it, the intimacy of being the energy for the one who carried the divine blood.

  “The strong always feed on the weak. Do it,” Astraea whispered, tilting her head back and exposing the pale column of her neck. “Take what is yours.”

  Selene hated her. She hated the smile, and she hated that this monster had killed Thena. But nevertheless, they were connected now through the same blood—god and apostle. She hated that her own survival depended on this bond.

  But the hunger was a roaring fire.

  Selene grabbed Astraea by the throat, pinning her against the rough bark of a pine tree. Astraea let out a breathless giggle, her hands coming up to grip Selene’s shoulders, pulling her closer.

  "Will you shut up," Selene snarled.

  She buried her face in the crook of Astraea's neck and bit down.

  The skin gave way. The blood, potent, flooded Selene’s mouth. It tasted like velvet and lightning. The relief was instantaneous, a wave of euphoria that washed away the cold and the disgust.

  Astraea gasped, her nails digging into Selene’s coat as her body trembled, not with pain, but with ecstasy. Above them, the Emberveil Nebula watched in silent witness.

  Selene drank deep, her eyes glowing with the nebula’s colors reflected from the heavens above. She drank until the headache vanished, until the divine blood quieted its murmurs. Then, with a rough shove, she pushed Astraea away.

  The vampire squire slid slightly down the tree trunk, touching the bleeding wounds on her neck. She looked up at Selene with hazy, adoring eyes.

  “You see, this is the only truth there is?” Astraea breathed, a quiet laugh slipping out with the words.

  Selene wiped her mouth with one hand and stared down at the vampire with cold contempt.

  “There is no truth in killing others just to survive,” she said, her voice hollow. “Now let’s head back.”

  She did not wait for a response. Turning on her heel, she walked back toward the faint orange glow of the camp’s dying fire. Behind her, the soft, rhythmic crunch of pine needles told her Astraea was following, a shadow trailing its reluctant new god back into the light.