The wind at night carried voices.
Sometimes they were real—bandits, mad prophets, Shardbound scouts hunting relics. Sometimes they were ghosts of the old world, repeating their last words over and over again through fractured radio static and dead satellites.
Tonight, Kairo wasn't sure which kind he heard.
He stood beneath the hollowed skull of a train engine, perched on the rusted remains of the control cabin. The stars were gone—as always—hidden behind the ashfall sky, but something glowed faintly beyond the horizon. Not fire. Not lightning.
Something worse.
The Shardbound were mobilizing.
He saw the flare markers drifting up in the east—circular, blue, and pulsing in ritual cadence. Each pulse meant reinforcement. Each pulse meant they were closing in.
Bone Mountain wouldn't stay a secret for long.
Kairo turned back to the station's interior. He had to move.
He knelt beside the campfire he'd built in the belly of a shattered vending machine, warming his hands over the soft flicker. A salvaged pot simmered quietly with boiled moss and dried meat, barely enough to pass for a meal.
Footsteps crunched in the gravel behind him.
He froze.
A blade was already in his hand—his second weapon, smaller than the spear, but deadlier in close quarters.
"You're not very good at covering your tracks," a familiar voice said calmly.
Kairo spun, blade raised.
It was the mercury-eyed woman from before—the leader of the Shard-hunters.
Except she was alone.
Unarmed.
And holding out a cracked vial of shimmerdust as a peace offering.
He didn't lower the blade. "You followed me."
"I did," she said, sitting down uninvited across the fire. "And I could've killed you twenty times by now. So maybe accept the gesture?"
Kairo stared at her. "What do you want?"
"To offer you a pact," she said.
"I don't make pacts with the Shardbound."
"I'm not Shardbound. Not anymore."
That made him pause.
She removed her glove, showing her left hand—the one wrapped in bone and wire. The skin beneath was blistered, etched with glowing scars. The remnants of a shattered pact seal.
"I broke with the Ardent Choir six moons ago," she said. "They were hunting something in the old cities. A girl. Small. Fast. Eyes like yours."
Kairo's stomach dropped.
"Her name was Yui."
The fire dimmed. His hand clenched the blade.
"What did you do to her?"
The woman held up her hands. "Nothing. She escaped. But not before she left this—"
From around her neck, she pulled a pendant. It was black iron, shaped like a gear with a fox engraved on one side and runic text on the back. Kairo reached for it slowly, heart pounding.
It was Yui's.
He had carved it himself when they were kids.
"She told me to find the Ashborn," the woman said softly. "Said he'd come. Said he'd wear a fox mask and smell like stormlight. I figured that was nonsense… until today."
Kairo was speechless.
Yui had known. Somehow, she had known he would survive and come looking. She had sent a signal through the ruins of the world—and left this woman to find him.
He finally lowered the blade.
"I'm Kairo," he said.
The woman nodded. "Aeska."
Silence hung between them for a moment.
Then she said, "There's more. Yui was captured after she fled. The Choir took her to Bone Mountain. That's where they seal magic they can't control. And what they can't seal…"
"They kill," Kairo finished.
Aeska nodded grimly. "But she wasn't just another escapee. She was something else. She lit up every sigil scanner within fifty miles. Blood like flame. Voice like fracture."
Kairo looked into the fire. "She's always been special."
"And if they realize how special, they'll turn her into a weapon. Or worse, a vessel."
That word chilled him. He'd heard it whispered in ruins. Creatures formed not of flesh, but of bound souls and broken memories. Living tools.
They would hollow her out.
He stood.
"Then we go now," he said.
Aeska blinked. "It's three days west. Through Coilroot forest. There are Revenant Hounds. Ashblight storms. Patrols. You'll never make it without—"
"You said she's a vessel to them. That means they've already started."
His voice had no anger. Just certainty.
Aeska hesitated. Then rose too.
"Then let's go."
The two of them walked into the night.
Ash fell like snow.
And far beyond the trees, a mountain shaped like a skull pulsed with blood-red light.