The forest narrowed as they pressed eastward.
Moss covered roots coiled like serpents across the trail, and the sky vanished beneath a thick canopy of boughs. The Ember Path no longer glowed with certainty. It flickered, hesitant, as if unsure of what lay ahead. Even Eira could feel it dimming not its power, but its confidence.
Something stirred beneath the soil here. Watching. Waiting.
The villagers traveled lighter now. The children rode atop carts repurposed from what little had survived their escape. The elders moved slowly, leaning on walking sticks or one another. The youngest adults had formed a quiet patrol, untrained but determined, carrying knives or broken farming tools, their eyes alert.
The terrain grew steeper. By dusk, the trees parted, revealing a jagged ridgeline where wind howled through broken stone. There, the remnants of an old bridge jutted into the air half-swallowed by ivy and shadow.
They stopped at its edge.
"It used to span the gorge," Lena said, squinting through the falling light. "You can see the anchor stones on the other side."
Torin gave a low whistle. "That's not a jump anyone's making."
The chasm beneath the ruined bridge yawned wide and black, easily a hundred feet across. Below, a river churned against the rocks, distant and wild.
Kaela stepped forward, testing the edge of the stone. "We could try to build something; ropes, maybe a pulley…"
"No," Thorne said sharply.
He crouched low, one hand against the earth.
Eira moved beside him. "What is it?"
"Tracks," he murmured. "Fresh. Leading toward the gorge… and none leading back."
Kaela's jaw tightened. "An ambush?"
"Could be. Or a trap waiting to be sprung."
A sudden cry echoed behind them, a villager, pointing.
Smoke.
It rose faintly in the trees to the west, curling like a finger.
Lena swore. "They're circling. Herding us toward the drop."
Eira closed her eyes, listening not just with her ears, but with the shard. With the thread of flame beneath the land.
The Path was still there.
But it was fraying.
"There's something under the bridge," she said suddenly. "A tunnel. Hidden. Buried beneath the stone."
Thorne met her eyes. "Are you sure?"
"No. But I feel it."
Kaela didn't wait for a second vote. "Then we dig. Thorne, help me find the entrance. Torin, keep the villagers back from the edge."
They moved fast. Even exhausted, the villagers rose to the call. Shovels were handed forward. Ropes unspooled. Children were carried, elderly helped. The earth beneath the broken bridge was old, packed tight with time but cracks had formed, and moss peeled away like skin.
Within an hour, they found it.
A narrow archway, buried beneath the stone. Its runes had long since faded, but the feeling was unmistakable, magic lingered here.
A way through.
"Is it safe?" Lena asked, peering in.
"No," Eira said. "But it's ours."
They filed in by torchlight, Kaela at the front, Thorne behind her, followed by Eira and the villagers in small groups. The tunnel was narrow and slick with age, carved by hands that remembered the Cradle. Somewhere above, boots crunched in the trees. Shadows moved.
Maelis was near.
—
Atop the ridge, Maelis stood cloaked in wind. Her soldiers had fanned out along the woods, blades drawn, traps set. She could feel the ember flicker below slipping through her grasp.
"Underground," she said coldly.
The tracker beside her nodded. "They found the old route."
She exhaled once. Then she smiled.
"Let them run. There's only one path forward and I've already lit the end of it."
She turned back toward the trees.
"To the Wellspring."