Southmarch Scrubs, Outskirts of Lonsvale
The sky had turned to slate by the time they reached the ridgeline.
Below lay the smoldering remnants of Lonsvale—once a minor holdfast, now nothing but ruin. Smoke climbed in slow, mournful spirals. No bells. No birds. Only the distant rasp of wind scraping ash from stone.
Aeron dismounted first.
Harwin and Elric followed, each man staring with grim silence. Even the boy, wide-eyed and pale, said nothing. He had not spoken since the wounded girl's warning.
Velstrom banners had been here. That was fact. But the stranger who wore Aeron's face?
That was prophecy—or madness.
Harwin grunted, scanning the desolation. "They didn't sack it. They silenced it."
Burnt wagons lay overturned along the main path. No dead in sight. No bodies. No scavengers.
Too clean.
They walked into the holdfast, weapons drawn but lowered.
At the gate, a message had been scrawled in charcoal:
"DO NOT DIG. THE EARTH KNOWS."
Below it: three symbols. One was the crowned raven of Velstrom. Another was a broken crown. The last—a thorn knot. Scorched.
Aeron froze.
"The thorn knot's ours," Harwin murmured. "Or was."
"Not anymore," Aeron said. "It's being used."
They pushed deeper in. Houses were gutted but not looted. No food, no tools. Just emptied. Even the wells were filled with stones.
Then, from the ruined chapel near the square, came a voice.
Soft. Humming.
Aeron motioned with two fingers—flank and surround.
Harwin approached from the left. Elric went right. Aeron entered through the wide doorway.
Inside knelt a girl, maybe ten, brushing ash from the chapel's altar with a piece of wool. She wore no shoes, just a tattered shift. Her hands were blackened with soot.
She looked up and smiled.
"He told me you'd come."
Aeron froze. "Who?"
"The Ash Brother. Said to give you this."
She held out a wrapped bundle. Carefully tied. Smelled of pine and burnt resin.
Harwin reached it first and unwrapped it.
A mask. Bone-white. A hawk's beak carved where the mouth should be.
Aeron stepped closer. "Where is this Ash Brother now?"
The girl pointed to the charred rafters. "Gone with the fire."
"What's your name?"
She shrugged. "No name. Only ash now."
Elric backed away slowly. "We need to go."
"Not yet," Aeron said, staring at the mask.
Because carved behind the jaw, in old dialect, was a phrase used only by House Thorne:
"For the crown beneath."
A secret. Passed only to blood kin. Not even Harwin knew it.
Aeron's voice was like gravel. "He knew this."
"He did," the girl said. "He said you were late. Said you'd forgotten your grave."
Then she stood, walked past them, and out into the gray light.
When they turned to follow—she was gone.
They burned nothing. Took nothing. The air was too still. Too watched.
But Aeron carried the mask.
And as they rode south, toward the forked valley, the boy finally spoke.
"Do you think she was a ghost?"
Aeron didn't answer right away.
Then: "No. But the man who sent her may as well be."