To the northern ridges

**KELLY THOMPSON'S POV**

The northern ridges were teeth.

Jagged peaks tore at the sky, their slopes sheathed in ice that glowed faintly, as if the moon had bled into the stone. Kael moved like a shadow ahead of me, his breath frosting the air in ragged bursts. The gash on his flank had stopped bleeding, but the fur around it hung in clumps, matted with dirt and dried venom. I didn’t ask if he could make the climb. His pride was as sharp as the Voidmother’s scorn.

The higher we climbed, the thinner the air became—or maybe it was the Veil, stretched taut over this place. My storm stirred uneasily, its lightning muted, as though the ridge itself were drinking the energy. The saplings’ roots had stopped trailing us miles back, repelled by some unseen ward. But the silence here was worse. It wasn’t empty; it was *waiting*.

“There.” Kael paused at a fissure in the rock, barely wide enough to squeeze through. The darkness beyond smelled of iron and petrichor. “The den.”