The fire had burned down to a soft bed of orange coals, its glow barely reaching the edges of the clearing. Ronan slept a few paces away, his silhouette rising and falling in a steady rhythm beside the tent. Even Kael’s and Lira’s presence—faint shapes beneath canvas further back—felt distant beneath the cold hush of the Frostline night.

  Eis kept her place by the dying fire, cloak drawn around her shoulders, gaze fixed on the silent trees. Frost clung to their branches, catching slivers of moonlight like shattered glass suspended in the air.

  The world was still.

  Utterly still.

  And then the stillness changed.

  The first sign wasn’t a sound—it was pressure.

  A faint twist in the ley currents beneath the soil, brushing against Eis’s senses like a cold hand across the back of her neck.

  She rose to her feet in fluid silence, one hand dropping to the hilt of her blade.

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  The forest ahead remained dark, but the silence had transformed—emptied, hollowed, as though every living creature had slipped away all at once. She scanned the tree line, breath steady, posture relaxed but ready.

  Eis drew a detection card with controlled precision, snapping it between her fingers. The card dissolved into shimmering dust, spreading in a blue circle across the clearing.

  The pressure returned—stronger this time. A heartbeat that wasn’t hers.

  The ley road beneath the ground flared briefly into visible lines of pale blue light, stretching north toward the mountains. And within that glow, a shadow flickered—tall, indistinct, half-formed, more suggestion than shape.

  Eis reacted instantly.

  She remained standing long after the disturbance faded, senses wide open, watching the tree line breathe. Nothing followed—no creature, no shadow, no whisper. Ronan continued to sleep, undisturbed, his breathing calm.

  Only when the ley road beneath her feet fully stilled did she lower her hand, letting the barrier dissolve into the night air.

  Whatever reached out had not been random.

  Something from the Vault—something tied to the relics—had touched the ley lines.

  Vauren must have reached the Sun Vault.

  Eis turned her gaze north, toward the faint pulse of light beneath the frozen ground, a quiet thread leading into the mountains.

  Tomorrow, they would be closer.