CHAPTER 31 - Smoke On The Wind

The eastern sky bled crimson.

Corwin watched the horizon from the saddle of the weary mule Liran had acquired at dawn. It wasn't much—lame in one leg, stubborn as sin—but it carried packs and the bulk of Ashra's gear, which she guarded as fiercely as a lioness over her cubs.

Their route was narrow and winding, a half-forgotten trail that once served as a smuggler's path before the Carrion Purge made even breathing suspicious. The old road bent beneath twisted trees and the moss-choked skeletons of roadside shrines.

None of them spoke much. Silence had become its own language among them—laced with watchfulness and the unspoken fear that something in the woods walked parallel to them.

Corwin kept his eyes on the trail but his mind wandered.

He'd barely slept since the altar chamber. Since the Relic-Keeper's words. Since the crow.

You are being watched.

The mark on his palm still itched, even though its glow had faded. The lines of the ouroboros were quiet now—but not gone. He could feel it, humming beneath the skin like an ember smoldering just out of sight.

Ashra, walking a pace ahead, slowed slightly and nodded toward a distant bend in the trail. "We'll reach the Harrow rise by dusk."

Liran snorted. "Assuming we're not flayed by wind-hounds or bled dry by mosquitoes first."

Ashra gave him a flat look. "Is that how you sweet-talk your contact?"

Liran just smirked. "Kellen's not the kind you charm. You show him coin, or knowledge. Preferably both."

Corwin pulled the map out from his coat again. No new symbols. No new pulses. Just that same soft shimmer on the Weirlow Basin—still far off, but growing.

"We'll need more than a name if we're going to walk into Carrion territory," he muttered.

"You'll get more," Liran said. "Kellen's a hoarder. If it exists and someone was willing to bleed for it, odds are he's got a copy."

They moved in silence for another hour before the woods thinned into low hills. The sky above had turned pale gold, but a strange haze had begun to rise from the south—smoke, thin and deliberate.

Ashra spotted it first. "Signal fire?"

"No," Liran said sharply. "That's Carrion-burn. They're purging the edge villages again."

Corwin's stomach tightened. "Looking for us?"

"Looking for anyone who knows what that altar was," Ashra said.

They crested a ridge just before sunset, and the world dropped away beneath them. The Harrow Pass sprawled before them like a shattered jaw—torn cliffs, dying rivers, and the faint glint of iron teeth where outposts once stood before the purge. In the far distance, where the valley bent toward dusk, rose a crooked tower set against the stone.

"That's Kellen's roost," Liran said. "Half fortress, half library. Built from stolen bricks and bad karma."

Ashra scanned the surrounding cliffs. "He has guards?"

"Only if he's expecting company. Otherwise, the traps keep the curious out."

Corwin eyed the road ahead. "And how do we get in?"

"With the right password," Liran said simply. "And a gift he can't refuse."

Corwin frowned. "What kind of gift?"

"You."

That stopped him cold. "Me?"

"You're marked, Vale. That seal on your hand isn't just dangerous—it's valuable. He'll trade knowledge for access to it. Or at least, to you."

Ashra's expression sharpened, but she said nothing.

Corwin hesitated. "What if he tries to sell us out?"

"Then we kill him," Liran said without hesitation. "But not before he tells us what he knows about the next seal."

---

They reached the base of the cliffs by nightfall.

As the last light drained from the sky, a low, mechanical grind echoed from above—stone shifting behind the tower wall. A figure appeared in the high arch of the gate, framed by torchlight.

He wore a half-mask of bone and a coat lined with stitched-together pages—inked runes and diagrams, faded from too many owners.

He looked directly at Corwin.

"Well," he said, voice echoing across the stone. "Liran's brought me a marked boy. It must be harvest season already."

Ashra's hand moved subtly toward the hilt of her dagger.

The man grinned wider. "Come in, then. Come before the smoke behind you learns your name."

And with that, the gates of Kellen's roost groaned open.