Chapter Twelve: The Road Remembers

The riverlands south of the glacier were full of ghosts, though not always the kind that walked.

Ellien had dreamed of them before: scattered towers leaning into nothing, bells cracked and silent, bridges swallowed by river ice. But here they were real. And broken.

Maen led the way along a cart track, the snow thinning as they descended. Frost clung to the edges of Charter stones, some still glowing faintly. Others lay toppled, their carved marks weathered smooth.

Ellien brushed her fingers across one as they passed.

It shivered beneath her touch.

“Old protections,” Maen said. “From before Kerrigor.”

Ellien frowned. “But Kerrigor was defeated years ago.”

“Yes. And Hedge after him. And Orannis sealed. But magic doesn’t forget so easily. The marks weaken, the bindings fray. What was once bent can bend again.”

They came to a shallow ford at dusk. The bridge was gone, only its stone foundations jutting out like teeth.

Ellien squinted at the water. “This feels… wrong.”

She stepped onto the riverbank and saw why.

In the silt were footprints, pressed deep though the mud was frozen solid. Long-toed, clawed at the tips. The trail vanished into the current.

Maen crouched. Her expression was grim. “Dead crossing water. That’s no small thing. Someone helped them.”

“Or something,” Ellien whispered.

She didn’t say the word spiral, though it coiled behind her teeth.

That night they made camp in the shadow of a ruined watchtower. Ellien couldn’t sleep. She sat with her knees hugged close, watching the dying fire.

The dreams came again.

This time she saw not the cairn itself, but the aftermath of its first binding. She smelled blood, old and coppery. Saw Abhorsens she did not know — a woman with hair like flame, a man with bells at his belt, faces blurred as though memory itself rejected them. They stood in a ring of stone, sealing something down with mark after mark, the sound of the bells thrumming like her own heartbeat.

Then the scene twisted.

The cairn’s stones cracked. The bells fell silent.

And the spirals began to move.

Ellien woke with a cry. Maen was already sitting up, knife in hand.

“You saw it again?”

Ellien nodded, trembling.

Maen sighed and put another branch on the fire. “The Clayr were touched by Hedge’s schemes, though few admit it now. Sight can warp when something vast presses close. You’re not mad. Just tangled in its shadow.”

Ellien clutched her blanket tighter. “It feels bigger than Hedge. Bigger than Orannis.”

Maen didn’t answer.

In the morning they would set out for Nestowe, but the road seemed heavier now, as if every step carried them closer not to safety, but to the wound itself — a wound the Old Kingdom had tried to forget, but which was opening again.