The scent of fresh bread used to be Ren's favorite part of morning.

  For three years he'd worked at Millbrook's bakery, arriving before dawn to stoke the ovens and prepare the day's first batch. The routine was comforting—the crack of eggs, the soft puff of flour, the steady rhythm of kneading. Sometimes Emma, the baker's eldest daughter, would join him early, humming old folk songs as she braided loaves into intricate patterns.

  This morning, though, the familiar scents were tainted by something else. Something that had been growing stronger for days.

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  Smoke.

  Reports had been trickling in from the northern settlements for weeks. Entire villages gone silent. Refugee columns attacked on the roads by something too fast to see clearly. The town guard had doubled their patrols, and Millbrook's ancient walls were manned day and night.

  But walls, Ren was learning, meant little against some threats.

  He was adding another log to the ovens when the first scream cut through the pre-dawn quiet. The sound was wrong—too high, too desperate, carrying a note of pure terror that made his hands tremble as he dropped the wood.

  More screams followed, and beneath them, a sound like claws on stone.