Mallow paused outside long enough to clean his blade in the snow, the stale red turning bright as it dampened. When she looked back for the Brighthand, she didn’t see them, though some curved shapes might have been bodies.
“You won’t find them,” Mallow said softly.
“Why not?”
“Bloodwyrms.” He pointed with his sword, where strange tracks crossed beneath the eaves of a stand of pine. The rest had been buried; but these were evident, three toed claws each as long as palm to pointer.
She shuddered. “Why didn’t they come for us?”
“They don’t regularly hunt living prey,” Mallow said. “But there were other reasons to avoid us.” He leaned back to look at the lintel. “That mark, there.” A sigil was carved above the resthouse door, an oroboros wyrm coiling to eat its own tail. “I saw it last night. It’s a ward, made of scale powder. Keeps the bloodwyrms out.”
“Does it protect against Veinwrights as well?”
“Unfortunately not,” he sighed. “Though it might give them a headache, like drinking too much ale.” Then, after glancing at her, his voice softened. “I doubt it would’ve helped much last night, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
She stared at the symbol for a long time, knowing that the Sisters and Brothers circled their chests in superstition to emulate the oroboros.
The slope led them down into a hollow valley, where the trees thinned around the charred bones of a building. Still, heavy air weighed down her lungs. Even before Mallow spoke, Lain felt something in her chest draw tight.
“What is this place?” she asked.
He hesitated before answering. “A shrine, I think. Or what’s left of one.”
The walls were blackened, the stone split from heat. Beneath the drifted snow, fragments of carvings jutted out: curled horns, serpentine scales, a glimpse of something once sacred. The smell of old ash didn’t hold, but she could imagine it well enough that it might as well have been there anyway.
She stepped carefully between the ruins. Charred beams had collapsed in the center, a blackened skeleton of what might once have been a great hall. Hanging from what remained of the rafters was a badly tarnished bell.
The sight of it made her throat ache. “Who would do this?”
“The Brighthand,” Mallow said quietly. “They call it cleansing.” His voice was bitter. “Any Kelthi shrine. It all goes the same way. They burn it.”
Lain stared up at the bell. Its surface was pitted and dull, but faint engravings wound up the metal in the pattern of scales, perhaps even the curving script of a prayer. At its center was a sun sigil, like the one on her own bell.
She reached up and touched it. The metal was cool beneath her fingers. For a moment, nothing happened. Then she gave the clapper a small, instinctive push.
The bell tolled once.
The sound was weak and cracked, barely a note. But it cut through the stillness of the snow like a breath drawn after drowning. Lain closed her eyes, expecting the answering echo of a wyrm, the deep rumble beneath the skin of the world.
Nothing came.
Beneath that silence was an ache, as vast and sorrowful as a mineshaft. She felt it as absence rather than presence, the memory of something great and living that had been silenced long ago.
She opened her eyes. “There was one here. A wyrm.”
Mallow stepped closer, his expression softening. “Long time ago, maybe.”
“No,” she said. Her voice trembled. “I can feel it. It’s gone, but it used to sing here.”
He didn’t question her. He reached for her hand and held it, their joined fingers catching the winter light.
For a while, they stood there among the ruins, listening to the quiet world and the fading echo of the bell, its mournful note still trembling in the air like the beating wings of a dying bird.
She stepped carefully over a few jutting bits of rafter. Mallow stood still, watching, respectful.
“Why did they do this?” She asked softly. “Was it Wyrmrot?”
It was the only thing which made sense. She had only ever been told of the Brighthand performing a cleansing when a village fell to Wyrmrot, whether by ill fate or the insidious influence of Kelthi serpent cults. Fire was the only way to clear the land of the sickness. But this place didn’t feel clean, not even in the ugly, painful manner of a scabbing wound. It felt hollowed, decaying. This, now, felt like rot.
Mallow let out a chuff, a bitter laugh. She turned back to look at him and the dark humor left his brow. “Wyrmrot isn’t real,” he said softly.
“What do you mean, it isn’t real?”
“I mean, they use that word,” Mallow said, but she could feel in their shared Tuning that he regretted his words. “But there’s no rot, Lain.”
“What is it then?” Her tail lashed uncomfortably and she brought it out without thinking.
He sighed, walked further into the room, then passed her, seeking something. “Here,” he said, looking over the charred remains of a bench. “There’s a basement.”
Lain stepped through the snow and gazed down into a hole in the earth, its stone steps partially covered with snow. It must be warmer below; the bottom few steps were wet, not frozen. The scent of soil and iron rose to her nose.
“What does this mean?” Lain asked softly.
“It means they likely had a wyrm egg,” he said. “They live beneath the earth.”
“An egg? I don’t understand.” The concept had never occurred to her – that wyrms would reproduce, that they would grow from hatchlings, that they could ever be anything but immortal and eternal.
Mallow’s heart swelled with hurt for her – pity for her – she felt it all in their Tuning. “There’s so much they haven’t told you,” he muttered.
Lain frowned. “What do you mean?”
Mallow hesitated, his gaze falling to the blackened stones underfoot. “The Underserpent wasn’t always bound to the Spire. It belonged to your people. The Kelthi.”
She blinked. “That’s impossible.”
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“No,” he said softly. “The Kelthi were their caretakers. Their kin. The wyrms slept under your mountains, and your kind kept their songs. You didn’t worship them. You tended to them, like shepherds.”
“That can’t be true.” Her voice cracked. “The wyrms are divine. They chose the Dagorlind –”
“They were taken.” He met her eyes, his tone grave. “The Dagorlind wanted their power. Twisting their songs into prayer, using them to throw off storms and earthquakes and who knows what else. And when the Kelthi protested –”
“They burned them,” she whispered, staring at the ruins around her.
Mallow nodded once. “The wyrms still answer to Kelthi voices. Even the ones that aren’t Tuned can feel them, though they can’t summon their powers. That’s why the Dagorlind fear you. That’s why they keep your kind in silence.”
She backed away, shaking her head. “No. No, I would’ve known. I would’ve felt it. The wyrms are holy, we’re unworthy to –”
“Lain,” he said. “They lied to you.”
The Tuning between them shuddered. “Stop it,” she hissed. “You don’t understand what you’re saying.”
He reached out to her, but she pulled away. “Lain –”
“Don’t,” she said, her tail lashing behind her. “You don’t get to tell me who my gods are.”
Before he could answer, she strode out into the white glare of day.
The air outside was painfully bright. The snow had already begun to crust under the new sun. Her hooves cracked through it with every step, the sound sharp as breaking glass. She walked until the cold burned through her cloak, until the sting in her eyes wasn’t just from the wind.
“Lain,” Mallow called, distant behind her.
She didn’t turn back.
Something shifted at the treeline ahead. Lain froze.
A figure stepped into view. At first she thought it was an elk, antlers broad and branching like oak limbs.
But he had a human face.
He was a Kelthi.
He was dressed in dark wool, the hood of his cloak trimmed in feathers, his throat layered with beads and copper charms. Across his chest ran a bandolier of ceramic bells, each capped and etched with markings that shimmered faintly when the light touched them.
He stopped when he saw her. His tail, long and scaled in silver-gray, flicked once. His eyes – an uncanny pale amber – searched her from crown to hoof, nose flaring, ears twitching, and in that quiet moment she felt something stir in her Tuning. Recognition, deep and resonant, like a chord struck between matching strings.
She said nothing, and for a long moment they simply stared at each other, mirroring wonder in their gazes.
“You,” he said softly. His voice was deep and measured, filled with something like awe. “You’re alive.”
Lain’s mouth went dry. “Who are you?”
The Kelthi man stepped closer. He didn’t reach for her, but he bowed his head slightly, the gesture formal and reverent. “I am Soryn Ashael, son of Edran. Your father’s brother.”
“My father…” she couldn’t breathe. It was a word she couldn’t grasp, like trying to wrap her hands around a whole city, or know every bend in a river that spanned a continent. “How could you know that?”
“It’s in your scent,” he said gently. “No two bloodlines smell the same. You carry the Ashael tone in your skin. In your Tuning.” His gaze softened. “And your eyes – that violet. I’d know them anywhere.”
She didn’t know what to say. For the first time she was looking at someone who looked like her, not just in horns or ears, but something deeper, a quiet familiarity in the way he stood, the slope of his shoulders, the curve of his tail.
Soryn studied her face, his own expression tight with an emotion he seemed too disciplined to show. Then, as if remembering himself, he reached up and unclasped one of the bells from his bandolier. It was near the center, not the largest, but worn smooth from touch. Its cap was chased with copper and inlaid with a single thread of pale turquoise.
“This belonged to your father,” he said. “I found it, after…” he trailed off, his jaw tightening, and then he steadied his voice. “After the Dagorlind came for Edran’s shrine.”
Lain stared at the bell. The ceramic was faintly warm, alive with old resonance. “My father’s?” she whispered.
He nodded once. “It’s yours now. You’re his line. I could not find your mother’s. I’m sorry.”
She reached out with trembling hands. When her fingers closed around it, the bell vibrated in her hand. Her Tuning shivered in answer, instinctively matching the note.
Soryn exhaled, his voice low. “There. You hear it, don’t you? The way it knows you.”
“I… I do.” Her throat constricted. “It’s singing.”
He smiled faintly. “They always do, for blood.”
She stared at the bell in her hands, tracing the spiraling wyrm shape etched around its base, its center marked by a golden sun. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her own bell, the one Elder Tanel had given her. “I have this one. It was what I was found with.”
Soryn’s eyes widened slightly. “Show me.”
She offered it to him. The back of his hand was bright with scales, white tufts of fur emerging between the plates. He took the bell between his palms. He turned it once, studying the pattern, then drew his own bell beside it.
“See here,” he said, one long fingernail pointing at a spiraling wyrm shape, its center etched with the same gold sun. He showed them side by side, where the same symbol was apparent. A family crest.
“This is the Edran line,” he said. “Your grandmother, and her grandmother before her.”
He turned her bell over, to show her the swirling symbol on the other side. “And here, your name. Lhainara Ashael.”
“Lhainara,” she said, struggling to breathe. “That’s – that’s me?”
“Whatever name you carry now, this is who you were before the world took the name from you.” His voice softened, but it was steely, too. “It’s a strong name. It belonged to the river that ran under your birth-village. You were named for its sound.”
Lain didn’t know she was crying until it was hard to see his hands. Grandmother. Great-grandmother. Father. Uncle. All these concepts once so foreign careened into paths each unknown and deep and wild, stretching into forests and glades and seas, so much larger was the world to her now. They weren’t relics, or stories, or bells hidden in the robes of an infant. They were real people, alive once, breathing and singing and dancing.
Soryn reached out, hesitated, then brushed the side of her arm with the back of his fingers. “You’ve been gone a long time, Lhainara. But the Ashael line endures.”
The world around her felt too big to contain what was happening inside her chest. For the first time, she didn’t feel like an orphaned mistake or an abandoned experiment of faith. She was from somewhere.
Mallow approached slowly from behind, keeping his distance. His hand was near his belt, more a habit than threat. The Kelthi’s glaze flicked to him, then backed to Lain. “You travel with a human.”
“He’s saved my life more than once,” Lain said, her tone quick and defensive as she wiped her eyes.
Soryn’s pale eyes softened with understanding, and something else. Curiosity. His pupils dilated as though catching the scent of something unseen. “You’re bound to him.”
Lain’s ear’s tipped back. How could he know that?
“Your Tuning,” Soryn said quietly. “It sings with him. You carry him inside you now. The way our kind were meant to bond – with another of our blood, not…” he trailed off, searching Mallow’s face. “And yet, it holds.”
Mallow shifted uncomfortably. “Not exactly planned, mate.”
Soryn’s lips curved faintly, almost a smile. “Rarely do plans grow where they are planted.” He gestured to the forest behind him. “Come. There’s shelter not far.”
“We need to get moving, and we’re headed up the mountain,” Mallow said cautiously.
“Then I ask that you allow us to provision you for your journey, and allow Lhainara to be hosted by her family.”
They followed him through the trees, the snow rising again around their ankles. Soryn moved easily over the drifts, silent as a stag. Lain trailed close behind, questions tangling like threads in her chest, all too tangled to speak on.
“How did you find us?” Lain asked.
“Watchers. Kelthi still trade on the borders. We keep eyes open, ears up. When the Brighthand rode north, we saw their banners. When their Veinwright passed, every attuned attached to a wyrm within ten miles could feel it. The wyrms hate their craft. It bends the air like iron.”
He led them down through a narrow gully where the snow thinned, revealing dark stone. There, behind a curtain of roots, a narrow fissure split the rock. Soryn ducked inside. “This way.”
The passage twisted, the air damp and warm, smelling faintly of moss and minerals. Lain could see well enough in the dark, but Mallow could not, and so she guided him with his hand in hers. The path was stable, and well maintained, but the ceiling was low enough to feel tight, and it was hard to tell how far the path might go. It was several long minutes in the darkness.
When they emerged on the other side, Lain gasped. A hidden valley stretched before them, cradled between sheer cliffs. The snow gave way to green, a living carpet of moss and fern and flowering vines. Streams wound silver through the grass, and at the valley’s heart stood a cluster of dwellings, round and low to the ground, their roofs thatched with reeds that shimmered like bronze in the sunlight.
The air itself was thicker here, humid and alive.
Soryn turned to them. “Welcome to Vaelun."