The wind carried the scent of soil and smoke.
Lira knelt beside the mossline, fingers coated in green sap as she coaxed new growth from the wall's edge. Each vine she tied back was another thread in the patchwork of the Hold... a quiet rebellion against ruin. She didn't speak as she worked, didn't need to. The land had started listening.
She could feel it.
Beneath her palm, the stone pulsed.
Behind her, Riven watched from the half-shelter, ears perked, tail curled around his side protectively. His limp had eased, though the scar down his shoulder remained vivid, stark against his dark fur.
"Your mark makes you look dangerous," Lira said softly, glancing back.
Riven chuffed.
She smiled.
A low rumble echoed overhead. Not thunder. Wings.
Zephyrion cut through the clouds, trailing crackles of blue light in his wake. The lightning drake circled the upper reaches of the Hold before vanishing into the mist that clung to the cliffs.
Lira rose to her feet.
Another shadow moved along the perimeter.
Forge.
The iron-bound beast passed in silence, chains draped like ribbons across his shoulders. He didn't speak, but he nodded once as he passed, a small acknowledgment that no longer surprised her.
They accepted her.
That was the strange part.
Not just Vaelrik. Not just the wounded boy-beast who followed her out of that broken city. But them. The crowned. The monstrous. The ancient. Beasts who once shattered lands and tore through warbands now watched her stack stones and bind moss with a quiet, patient stillness.
It unsettled her less than she expected.
---
She found Vaelrik near the watchstone, standing at the very edge of the cliff, arms crossed. The glow of the monolith pulsed faintly, a rhythm of power tied to the Vaulting that ran beneath the Hold. When she reached him, he didn't look away from the horizon.
"You hear it too," he said.
Lira tilted her head. "The pulses?"
He nodded.
"They're growing stronger."
"Is that bad?"
"Not yet."
Not yet.
That was always the way of it.
She followed his gaze across the distant plains. Storms gathered far to the north, the skies above them thick with clouds that didn't move, the wind silent around their edges.
"A crown stirs," Vaelrik said, voice low.
She frowned. "Another beast?"
He nodded. "One I haven't felt before."
A moment passed before she spoke again.
"Do you always go alone?"
"To crown?"
She nodded.
Vaelrik shook his head slowly. "Not always. But few follow. Fewer return."
She looked at him carefully. "Then take me."
That made him turn.
"Why?"
"Because I'm not afraid. And because you'll need someone who doesn't follow orders."
Vaelrik stared at her, unreadable.
"I can't bind beasts. I don't want to. But I see things. I know how people move, how ruins breathe, how danger settles in bones long before blades are drawn. That's why I survived."
He didn't speak.
"You saw that," she added. "Or you wouldn't have let me stay."
A long silence stretched between them.
Then he nodded.
"Tomorrow."
---
The Hold shifted as night fell.
Where once it had been cold and sharp, the land now exhaled warmth. The moss fields had spread, reaching the base of the eastern walls. New patterns emerged beneath the watchtower's broken arch... vines curling in mirrored shapes, as though the land were remembering old sigils long since erased.
Lira sat near her fire, sharpening her blade.
Riven lay across from her, tail twitching in dream-sleep. The other beasts moved in the distance... Skarn prowling the wall, Karnyx watching from a crumbled alcove, and Valgrin exhaling slow breaths of smoke beneath the moon.
She saw Vaelrik last.
He stood alone, staring at the ridge.
The wind shifted.
And she felt it too.
Something... pulling.
Not from above, not from the plains or sky.
But from below.
The roots of the Hold trembled, just once. A deep echo, not heard, but felt in the spine.
Lira's eyes narrowed.
"The land's remembering something," she whispered.
And beside her, Riven lifted his head.
---
The rain returned by nightfall... soft, steady, not enough to flood, but enough to muffle the world.
Vaelrik stood alone beneath the Watchstone.
The others were scattered through the Hold, resting, pacing, watching. Forge sat coiled in silence beneath a crumbled archway, his chains humming faintly in rhythm with the distant thunder. Skarn had vanished into the ruins hours ago, but Vaelrik could still sense the tremors of his patrol. Valgrin perched near the east wall, wings folded tight, eyes glowing like banked coals. Mournroot lingered as always, unseen but not absent. Karnyx lay curled atop the stoneworks near the entrance, jaw resting on his claws, half-asleep. Nightspine was nowhere visible, but his shadow moved along the edges, never far.
Zephyrion didn't land... he rarely did now. He rode the air above the Hold, wingbeats silent, storms curled in his wake.
And Gairos… Gairos did not move at all.
The crowned mossbeast remained where he had first risen... at the heart of the courtyard, surrounded by the vines and moss his arrival had seeded. His eyes were closed. His breath slow. But the Hold bent around him. The air felt steadier now. Balanced. Less like a battlefield, more like a beginning.
Vaelrik exhaled, mist curling from his lips.
A sound behind him.
Lira.
She moved without fear now. Not careless, but grounded. He turned slightly to watch her approach. Riven padded beside her... limping still, but upright, his strength returning one breath at a time.
"You've barely stopped moving since morning," Vaelrik said.
"Neither has your Hold."
She tilted her chin toward the Watchstone. The pulse from its core was steadier now. Less like a warning. More like a heartbeat.
"I thought about leaving," she admitted, eyes scanning the far towers. "Not because I was afraid. But because staying means more than survival."
"It always does," Vaelrik said.
She crouched beside him, pulling a strip of bark from the pouch at her side. Riven settled near her feet, curling tightly. The moss beneath him thickened, as if welcoming him back.
"You've changed since that first day on the ridge," she said.
"So have you."
"I don't think I have," she said. "I think I just stopped pretending not to care."
The words lingered. The Watchstone's light cast long shadows behind them.
Then Vaelrik spoke. "Tomorrow, I crown again."
Lira looked up sharply. "Already?"
"There's another waiting," he said. "A beast that once belonged to the deep. Buried when the Hold was taken. I felt it stirring after Gairos rose. Something old. Slow. Bound not by chains, but memory."
Lira frowned. "You're not worried?"
"I'm always worried," Vaelrik said. "But the Hold won't wait. It keeps breathing. Keeps reaching. I either guide it, or I fall behind."
A low rumble cut across the courtyard.
Skarn returned, blood along his claws. Not fresh—not his. He grunted as he passed them, dropping something small at Vaelrik's feet.
A shard of stone. Marked.
Vaelrik picked it up.
Insignia. Faint. Not his.
"Scouts," he muttered.
"Survivors?" Lira asked.
"Or rivals."
Another tremor shook the ground.
Not from Skarn.
From below.
Both of them rose.
The beasts followed without command. Forge's chains lifted. Karnyx stood, lips curling back from his fangs. Valgrin stretched, a ripple of fire trailing his jaw. Nightspine emerged from the shadow of the Watchstone, silent and ready.
Even Gairos shifted... just once.
Vaelrik looked to the mossbeast and gave a short nod.
"Guard the Hold."
Gairos lowered his head.
Then Vaelrik turned to Lira.
"Stay with him. If the ground breaks, if something comes through... don't fight it. Wait for my signal."
Lira didn't argue. She only laid a hand on Riven's flank, eyes locked with Vaelrik's.
"Come back."
He didn't answer.
The beasts moved.
Vaelrik led them to the lower ridge, past the hollow where the decay vines had once risen. Beyond that, a sealed path... a fault line in the stone, now bleeding light from the mossroot veins.
The Vaulting stirred beneath his skin.
A call.
An echo.
He reached the edge and crouched.
"Here," he said. "We dig."
Skarn lunged first. Claws tore into the stone, rending open layers of brittle earth. Forge followed, chains spinning, smashing deeper. The others waited in formation, eyes scanning the wilds beyond.
Vaelrik stood back, breathing slow.
Beneath them… something shifted.
Stone cracked.
And from the broken ground rose a rumble so deep it seemed to fold the world in half.
Not a beast's roar.
A yawn.
Of earth.
Of age.
Something was waking.
Vaelrik stepped forward.
His Brand burned.
The next crown would not come easily.
But it would come.