The forest erupted into chaos.
Mo moved first. The Shamshir hissed as it left its sheath, slicing through the air with a sound like thunder muffled in velvet. His first swing didn't need to hit—it scattered the Vulture riders, forcing them to fan out, buying him a crucial few seconds to assess.
Aylen was already gone, melted into shadow. Mo didn't need to look to know she'd flank from the east, knives hungry for throats. She was efficient that way.
The Vultures were well-trained, but they made one mistake: they didn't run.
Mo's eyes tracked the leader—a tall one, dark beard braided with bone chips, a curved glaive resting across his saddle. The others were distractions. That one was the spine. Break him, and the rest would fold.
He charged.
The ground tore beneath his boots, momentum coiling like a spring. The Shamshir's edge met steel with a flare of cerulean fire, and the rider reeled back, eyes wide. Mo didn't let up. He pressed harder, each strike faster than the last, the force of the Shamshir driving the rider off his mount and into the dirt with a crash that snapped bones.
Behind him, Aylen emerged like smoke, her blades gleaming red. One rider fell without a scream. The second barely managed to parry before she slipped under his guard and buried a dagger in his ribs. Her movements were quiet, merciless—precise as the poison she sometimes used.
It was over in less than a minute.
Mo stood in the settling silence, breath steady, gaze cold. Ash drifted from a burning tree the Vultures had torched during the scuffle, curling in the morning light like phantom fingers. He turned to Aylen, who was already cleaning her blades on the dark cloak of a corpse.
"Outer Vultures," she muttered. "That's the second group in a week."
"They're moving faster," Mo said, crouching by the leader's body. He tore open the cloak and frowned. A wax-sealed parchment had been sewn into the lining.
Mo cracked the seal. The ink was still damp. A fresh order.
He read aloud:
> "Mo, bearer of the Azure blade. His path leads east to the Cavern of Rains. Delay or destroy. No witnesses."
Aylen's eyes hardened. "They know your route."
Mo nodded. "Which means someone's watching."
She knelt beside him. "You think it's someone we passed? That old man at the tavern? The merchant girl in Elar? The priest—?"
"No," Mo interrupted, jaw tight. "Whoever it is, they're closer."
A pause. Then, quietly, Aylen asked, "You think it's one of ours?"
Mo didn't answer immediately. His mind was a storm again, filled with faces—some trusted, others not quite. He wasn't ready to accuse anyone. Not yet. But he'd be a fool to think their journey was still hidden. The hunt had begun the moment he took the Shamshir from the ruins of his home.
And now the path was pulling them toward something bigger—The Cavern of Rains. He didn't know what waited there. Another fragment, perhaps. Or something worse.
"We leave before dusk," he said.
Aylen stood, wiped blood from her hands. "And if more follow?"
Mo looked down at the corpses. "Then we make sure they don't return."
As they gathered their gear and doused the last flames, Mo paused for one final look at the clearing. Something about it—about the quiet, the smoke, the ash—felt like a memory that hadn't happened yet.
A warning in the bones of the earth.
And so, with steel drawn and silence trailing behind them, they headed east—toward storm, toward secrets, and toward the echoes of something long buried clawing its way back into the world.