As twilight faded into night, Kael guided the group into a narrow alcove nestled between jagged outcrops—sheltered from the mountain wind and just hidden enough from watchful eyes above.

  While Kavari inspected the perimeter, Kael crouched low and showed Runt how to dig a shallow pit for a concealed fire—lining the base with flat stones and hollowing out a second tunnel for airflow.

  “This won’t light the mountains up like a signal flare,” he said, demonstrating how to angle the kindling. “Just enough to warm water or cook meat. The trick is minimizing smoke and glow.”

  He glanced at her, serious now. “Fires can draw monsters. The smell of burning meat travels fast on cold air.”

  Runt nodded, wide-eyed, the lesson sinking in deeper than usual.

  Once the fire was quietly crackling—its flame almost invisible from more than a few feet away—they settled around it. The twin moons hung high above, casting silver shadows across the stone.

  Kael’s gaze dropped to the crystal shardmaw tooth now tied to Runt’s pack strap, glinting faintly in the firelight.

  “Those are valuable,” he said, gesturing with a nod. “We don’t have time to deal with it now, but monsters like shardmaws have crystalized mana in their bodies. Cores. Fragments.”

  Kavari leaned against the rock wall, her armor faintly humming with residual heat.

  “The Adventurers’ Guild has whole teams for that,” she added. “Come in after the fight, harvest what’s left. Shards, hides, bones—whatever sells.”

  Runt’s brow furrowed. “So I can sell it?”

  There was a touch of innocence in her voice. She still didn’t fully grasp coin. People just gave her what she needed in the Iron District. Food. Clothes. A place to sleep.

  Kael gave a small smile. “Yeah, you can. Bronze coins per tooth, maybe more if the core’s intact. Sell it to the Guild or the Arcanium. They refine the shards into mage cores.”

  He pointed to the runes etched into Kavari’s armor, dim now but powerful when charged.

  “Those power glyphs. Enhance weapons. Fuel armor. Big cores? Those get turned into evokers.”

  Runt tilted her head. “Evokers?”

  “I never really knew what those were,” she admitted.

  Kavari answered. “They let non-mages use magic. Very rare. Very expensive. Very restricted.”

  “Very desirable,” Kael added, swirling his canteen. “Especially during Fadefall. One core’s got enough juice to last a night, but…”

  He trailed off.

  Runt leaned forward. “But?”

  Kavari answered, her voice low. “They draw monsters. Mana-starved beasts feel it like a wound in the air. Like moths to flame.”

  Runt’s ears flicked in alarm. “Then… why use them?”

  Kael’s smile was small. Sharp.

  “Because you can use that against them. Put an evoker in the right place… you don’t just bait them—you trap them. Set lines. Trigger ambushes. Win the night before it even starts.”

  Runt blinked, impressed. “Can I fight during this Fadefall?”

  “I don’t want to go to the vault,” she said firmly. “And I don’t want to stay at the pit. Not this time.”

  Kael looked at her. Something fierce and proud behind his calm.

  “Pass the trial,” he said, smiling.

  Runt had dozed off not long after, wrapped tightly in a thick travel blanket, her soft snores barely audible over the distant whisper of wind curling between jagged stone. The fire Kael had built was little more than a smoldering glow now, hidden deep in a dug-out pit, shedding just enough warmth to keep the cold at bay without drawing attention.

  Above them, the twin moons hung heavy and low, casting silver veins across the rock face. Every shadow seemed to twitch with life.

  Kavari’s voice broke the silence.

  “Howlers are gonna attack.”

  Kael didn’t flinch. He just nodded and glanced at Runt.

  “At least she’ll get some sleep first,” he said with a dry smile.

  Then he turned to Kavari, his voice quieter now, softened by the dark. “I know there’s some things we tiptoe around. Things you haven’t told me. We’re what, a day out from the Ash Claws?” His eyes flicked toward her Pridefang—blackened steel etched with blood-runes that drank the firelight.

  She noticed the look and shook her head, the movement small but firm.

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  “If you’d told me about your past, showed me the contents of your chest,” she said, her tone neutral, but something bitter edged the words. “I still couldn’t. It’s not my place.”

  Her gaze dropped, shoulders tense beneath the mantle of her armor. “I’m not a First Fang. Or a shaman.”

  Silence stretched for a beat. Then, quieter, gentler—

  “But I can talk about myself.”

  Kael didn’t interrupt. He leaned back against the stone and waited.

  “My Pride,” she said, and there was something almost nostalgic in her voice now. “Duskrock Reach. A high, arid plateau at the very edge of the Pridelands, where the cliffs meet the deep desert. Dry winds that peel the skin off your lips, nights so cold they steal your breath. The land teaches you hard lessons there—lessons about endurance, silence, and killing.”

  She smiled faintly, though it didn’t reach her eyes.

  “We weren’t like the war-prides from the heartlands. No great drums or golden banners. Our honor was whispered, not roared. We were known for our trackers. Ambushers. Assassins. Children were taught to follow a scent trail before they could speak in full sentences.”

  Kael listened, watching the way the firelight danced across her face. For once, she wasn’t hiding behind sarcasm or sharpness. Just telling.

  “My mother,” she said, her voice softening, “was a Shadow Fang. One of the old ones. She taught me the ways—how to wait, how to strike, how to disappear when needed. No mercy. No glory. Just precision.”

  She fell silent for a moment, eyes distant.

  “The Trial of Scars… ours wasn’t about just blood. It was about control. Fear. I didn’t win mine by being the strongest. I waited. I misled. I broke the others slowly, made them doubt themselves. Some bled. Some walked away. None stood at the end.”

  There was no pride in her voice, only memory.

  “After that, one of the elders came for me. A Shadow Fang. Chose me to apprentice. That title… it's rare. It’s not just about skill—it’s about being the thing in the dark others fear. The silent knife that enforces oaths and ends dishonor.”

  Her jaw tensed.

  “But I didn’t stay.”

  Kael raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  “I was assigned to Brassreach,” she said simply. “The rest… I think you’ve figured out by now.”

  She let out a short, dry laugh. Bitter and tired.

  The wind stirred the embers in the pit. Somewhere in the distance, a faint howl curled along the ridgeline like a warning.

  Kael didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

  He just shifted a little closer, letting the silence settle back over them like a blanket—and this time, it wasn’t uncomfortable.

  They sat in silence.

  The wind whispered through the rocks above, cold and thin, chasing the last warmth from the fire. The stars hung like watching eyes in the black dome overhead. Kael sat still, fingers resting lightly against his knees, staring not at the fire, but through it—somewhere far beyond.

  In his mind, he could feel the old boxes. Lined up like tombs. Each one sealed. Each one heavy.

  He reached for them. Not with the desperate fury the Torrent used to demand, not with teeth bared or heart racing. Just a quiet touch—like brushing the spine of a book you’ve read a hundred times but never dared open again.

  No snarl came. No pressure behind his eyes. Just breath. Just stillness.

  Beside him, Kavari pulled her travel blanket out and wrapped it tight around her shoulders. Her silhouette, always striking, seemed softer in the glow of the coals. The faint glint of her armor was tucked nearby, set with quiet purpose.

  For the first time in years, he had truly slept.

  He glanced at Kavari. And something inside—some long-forgotten lock—clicked loose.

  He inhaled through his nose and let the words come.

  “I wasn’t born in the Holdings,” Kael said, his voice quiet, steady. “That was… a different world entirely.”

  He stared into the firelight, the shadows dancing across his scarred face. His scarred hands, worn, the edges of tattoos on his forearms, rested against his knees.

  “My family name once opened doors. Not just opened them—held them open. Old blood. Old coin. My father was… a radical. A failed revolutionary in a world that had no patience for idealism.”

  Kavari tilted her head, her ears twitching with interest. “You were a noble?”

  Kael gave her a crooked smile and held up a single finger. “Key word: failed.”

  She scooted a little closer, the blanket around her shoulders shifting. The flickering light played across her wide eyes, drawn in now, completely.

  “My father believed humanity’s fractured dominion could only be restored through unity—not just among humans, but between us and the beast kin. He said the true enemy wasn’t claws or bloodlines. It was the machine. The system. The chains that kept us divided and fighting over scraps while the crowns and the guilds kept power for themselves.”

  He gave a humorless chuckle, low and bitter.

  “It didn’t go over well in the courts.”

  Kael leaned back slightly, spine tapping the stone behind him.

  “When he finally moved to act on it—tried to start a revolution against a monarch who styled himself the Immortal King—he was crushed. Publicly. Brutally. I was barely nine when I watched him hang.”

  The words hung heavier than the silence that followed.

  “They seized everything. Our holdings. Our titles. The guards loyal to us were hunted down. Our house banners were burned. We escaped with false names and little else. My mother and I ended up in the Holdings, buried under soot and ash and rot, same as the rest.”

  He paused, jaw clenched for a moment.

  “She tried to make the best of it. Tried to teach me—keep me educated, keep me kind—but… sickness doesn’t wait for that. She caught something that would’ve been cured easily anywhere else. But we couldn’t afford the price of the cure. And so…”

  Kael’s eyes dropped, unreadable.

  “I watched her die. Slowly. By inches. Nothing I could do. Nothing anyone would do.”

  He exhaled, low and ragged. “And that’s when the hate started.”

  Kavari didn’t speak. She didn’t have to.

  “I blamed the beast kin,” Kael said. “I knew it was the system, the corruption—but hating that was too big. Too vague. My father tried to love them and he died for it. So they became the perfect enemy. Fangs and claws and war cries. Easy to see. Easy to fight.”

  He leaned forward now, arms on his knees.

  “I ended up in a beater gang. Half-feral boys, angry at the world. We ran the alleys like wolves, fought for scraps and territory, beat the weak so we could pretend we weren’t. It wasn’t justice. It wasn’t glory. It was survival. Rage wrapped in bruised knuckles.”

  Kael gave a breathless laugh, short and cold.

  “Then I saw the posters. Border War recruitment. ‘Take the coin. See the front. Be a man.’ I was dumb. I was furious. I signed up.”

  Kavari watched him like he was a dream she was afraid to blink away.

  “My first battle? I didn’t even fight. I just ran around screaming, ducking arrows. I pissed myself. It was chaos.”

  She snorted, couldn’t help it. “I’m trying to imagine that.”

  “Don’t,” he muttered, chuckling. “I was an idiot.”

  “But I wanted to become something. A weapon. I thought if I hated hard enough, I could carve meaning into the world.”

  His voice lowered again.

  “But war… war doesn’t erase hate. Sometimes it sharpens it into something colder. And then, eventually, it changes it. Sometimes it just burns it out of you entirely.”

  There was a pause. Then.

  “It all changed at Marrow Vale.”

  Kavari leaned forward slightly, knees almost brushing his. Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “What happened at Marrow Vale?”

  Kael’s eyes flicked to hers, and in them was something ancient. Something haunted.

  “That,” he said, “is a longer story.”

  As Kael said that, Howls erupted around them, echoing across the mountains.