Chapter 9: Blood of the Betrayed

The moorlands stretched endlessly—gray skies over wind-scoured earth, frozen puddles cracking under each step.

Frey leaned against Alvin as they crossed the broken threshold of a ruined chapel. Vines crawled up cracked pillars, and shattered stained glass littered the floor like forgotten blessings.

“This was once a temple,” Frey murmured. “My mother used to bring me here when the world still believed in peace.”

Alvin gently lowered her onto a half-buried stone bench. “And now?”

“Now it's just another place that burned.”

He glanced around. The roof was mostly gone, but a sliver of moonlight broke through the clouds.

Frey reached beneath her cloak, pulling out a familiar object—his sister’s bone-carved pendant.

“You kept it all this time,” she said.

He nodded.

She turned it over, tracing the faded runes on the back. “I carved these with a hunting knife. I was ten.”

Alvin’s breath caught. “Why?”