"Someone tried to sand off the elven script," she noted, voice hushed. "Couldn't cleanse the grain."
Draven crouched, rubbing ash between thumb and forefinger until it dissolved into the breeze. "Scorch the flesh and bone remembers," he murmured. Then more quietly, "Steel, too."
They skirted the ruins, slipping into the shelter of a dry creek bed that curved under a collapsed mill bridge. Sylvanna raised two fingers; Raëdrithar banked, guiding a downdraft that masked their scent beneath loam and crushed fern. Draven used the brief lull to check the tension on his thigh sheath. Leather still pliant, buckle still silent. Satisfied, he pressed onward.
