Her gaze hovered over the inked carnage—red rings bleeding into parchment, the cathedral's black mark a bruise she'd never stop feeling.
"The deaths weren't random," Veylan said, voice barely above breath now. "Someone's tracing a pattern. A path. Each site linked by ley lines. Ancient channels once used by the Old Order for rites… and executions."
Myhra's jaw tightened. That pattern. She'd seen something like it before. In her sister's final journal—the pages she hadn't burned.
"They're not just burning villages," he said, watching her. "They're drawing a sigil. A bloodmark. One meant to awaken something. Or someone."
She didn't speak. Couldn't—not when her mind had already leapt ahead. Not when she'd seen that symbol once, in frost and shadow, carved into the cliffs near Halvaran's edge. A mark that hummed when her bare skin touched it.
