Page 68 of Unveiled

Fraser crouched beside him, touching the disturbed earth. “Aye. Someone stepped here. Light feet. Running, maybe.”

Adrian frowned, scanning the dark undergrowth. “She wouldn’t run without purpose.” He checked the charm. “We still appear to be on the right path.”

Xiathen tilted his head, eyes distant. “Something called to her.”

Connor stiffened. “Called?”

“A pull,” Xiathen said softly. “Something familiar to her. Something she feared, yet could not ignore.”

Max muttered under his breath. “Brilliant.”

They moved deeper. The charm beckoned, drawing them quietly through the mist-laden trees and grass, guiding them like a pulse beneath the earth, steady and insistent. A faint glow shone in Adrian’s palm, threads of pale light spilling between his fingers and creeping across the ground in thin, wandering ribbons.

Adrian kept close to Connor. His breath held tight in his chest as the fog thickened around their ankles. Max and Fraser flanked them, alert and tense, blades low and ready. Xiathen moved at the front, robes whispering over the moss, eyes half-closed as he listened to something none of the others could hear.

“It’s leading us true,” Xiathen murmured. “Her magic clings to the charm. Like a memory carried on the wind.”

Connor grunted, pushing aside a branch wet with dew. “Aye, well, let it hurry. We’re losing light because of this damn mist.”

The mist curled thicker, swallowing the trees until they looked like pale ghosts standing shoulder to shoulder. The charm brightened, its pulse becoming quicker and sharper, almost urgent.

Adrian’s skin prickled. “It’s reacting.”

Connor saw Fraser tighten his grip on his knife. “Aye. Something’s ahead.”

The forest began to change. The air grew cold. The sound of the world dimmed. The birds had gone silent, the branches no longer creaking as if the wind held its breath. The canopy thickened, swallowing the last of the weak afternoon light. A cold hush settled over the glen, and Adrian felt the Valour bond tug faintly against his ribs.

Xiathen raised a hand. “Stay still.”

The forest trembled. Not with movement, but with sound. Soft, brittle, and unnatural.

“Nightwrought?” Frasier asked.

Xiathen said, “A lone scout. Wounded, perhaps. Weak, but not harmless.”

“Irial could be with it,”Max stated.

“Or running from it,” Adrian said.

Connor’s jaw set. “We find her. Now.”

They moved again, quieter, tighter. Connor led them through a break in the trees to where the ground dipped into a hollow. A bowl of shadows. The strange sound pulsed again, low and sharp as a splinter of cold air.

Xiathen lifted their hand sharply. “Stop.”

Everyone froze. The charm flared. The fog in front of them shivered, then peeled aside, as though split by an unseen hand. Then they saw her.

Irial knelt at the base of an ancient oak, hands wrapped around her head, shoulders shaking. A thin, fractured shimmer clung to the tree trunk beside her, , writhing with the distortion of a Nightwrought’s presence. The creature was half-formed, clinging like a stain to the bark, its shape rippling like torn cloth caught between two worlds.

Adrian took a step forward, but Connor’s arm shot out, stopping him. “Wait.”

The Nightwrought turned and surveyed them not with eyes, but by angling the fractured dark toward them, as if mimicking a gaze it had learned from watching others. The sound sharpened, creating a soft rupture in the air, delicate and brittle.

Irial whimpered, pressing herself tighter against the bark.

Xiathen stepped forward, calm as winter. “It is weak. It has been trying to anchor itself but cannot hold form. It will fade.”

“Fade faster,” Connor growled. “Adrian, left. Max, right. Fraser, on me.”