As they followed the clear marks of the caravan the morning sun cast long shadows over the uneven and rugged terrain. Xavier, Ella, and Lianna moved in relative silence, their pace was steady but cautious as they tracked their prey. Frostclaw and Valkra remained at the edges of their periphery, close enough to help if they were attacked but far enough away that the casual observer wouldn’t notice them. The tension in the group had mounted since leaving the ruin of the waystation behind. It had become obvious that raiders and slavers operated with impunity in these lands and that alone compounded Lianna’s stress as she frequently lifted a hand to touch the collar around her neck.

  Despite the heavy weight of anxiety pressing on her, Lianna took the lead without hesitation. Her instincts as a tracker overrode her unease, allowing her to focus on the signs left behind by the caravan. The shifting earth and rock of the plains presented no challenge to her practiced eye. She moved with certainty, guiding the group as they trailed the procession bound for Ironhaven.

  Every so often, she would crouch, her fingers brushing over the indentations left in the soil. Each time, Xavier knelt beside her, listening carefully as she explained the details hidden in the disturbed earth. She pointed out the deep grooves of the wagon wheels, the weight of their burden evident in the way the dirt had been compressed. "Heavy cargo," she noted, glancing toward him. "Either supplies... or bodies."

  Further along, she indicated clusters of boot tracks and hoofprints. "These patterns tell us about the guards," she explained. "They patrol the caravan's perimeter, shifting their formations based on potential threats." Xavier followed her gesture, committing the details to memory. He could see the careful spacing of the footprints, the indication of controlled, disciplined movement. These were professional slavers, not just raiders and they were no unorganized rabble.

  Then, at another section of the trail, she went still. The soft soil cradled a set of unshod footprints, smaller, uneven, pressed deep from exhaustion. Lianna’s jaw clenched. "Slaves," she muttered, her voice tight. The air around them seemed to grow heavier.

  The morning wore on, the sun creeping higher in the sky. It was near midmorning when Lianna abruptly stopped. Her ears perked up, her sharp gaze sweeping across the trail. Something was different. Kneeling swiftly, she motioned Xavier to join her, her fingers delicately tracing a new set of indentations splitting away from the caravan’s path. The way the prints dug into the dirt, the uneven depth, the frantic angles, these tracks told a story all their own.

  "Look here," she said, gesturing toward the disrupted prints. "These are rushed, see how they are deeper at the front. Whoever made them was running. Panicked."

  She stood, striding several steps further along the erratic trail, scanning the terrain. After a few moments, she pointed to another disturbance. "See here? The scuff marks, the way the dirt is thrown? It means they stumbled and scrambled to get back up." Her eyes narrowed as she studied the finer details. Between some of the steps, faint but unmistakable drag marks marred the earth. Her expression darkened. "Shackles." She traced the indentations with her fingertips, her voice edged with restrained anger. "Whoever they were, they were bound at the ankles."

  Ella, having quietly moved to their side, exhaled. "This is good though right," she mused, her tone cautiously hopeful. "Someone tried to escape. Maybe they managed to get away."

  Lianna didn't answer immediately. Instead, she rose and moved back toward the main trail, eyes flicking across the land ahead. The reprieve was short-lived. Barely two hundred yards from where they had first spotted the escapee’s tracks, Lianna’s expression darkened. She pointed to a second set of prints, running parallel to the first, moving into the tall grass.

  "I have my doubts," she growled softly.

  Xavier crouched beside her, following her line of sight. These tracks were different. Where the escapee’s prints were hurried and erratic, these were calm, deliberate, measured.

  "A slaver," Lianna said, her voice cold. "They must have noticed the absence."

  The group followed the trail, moving carefully through the wind-brushed grasses. The land held no secrets from Lianna. She walked them forward with grim certainty, leading them toward an inevitable conclusion. Then, at the point where the two trails met, the scene told them everything they needed to know. The earth bore clear signs of struggle. Disrupted soil, deep gouges where someone had thrashed. A scuffle. A fight. A fleeting attempt at freedom, and then, the blood. It was not an excessive amount, not enough for a fatal wound, but easily enough to mark punishment. The droplets had darkened the upset earth, smeared where someone had collapsed. A weapon had struck flesh here. A reminder. A warning. From there, the trail continued, but now the two sets of footprints had become one. One set, even and unbothered, the triumphant slaver. The second set, slow, stumbling, the captured individual. The broken soon to be slave.

  Lianna’s shoulders tensed, her tail flicking in restrained fury. "They didn’t make it," she murmured, her voice tight. "They were caught. Dragged back."

  A heavy silence followed her proclamation.

  Ella’s hands clenched at her sides. “Damn it, I had hoped at least one of them made it away.”

  Xavier said nothing at first, his gaze locked on the road ahead. The caravan wasn’t far now. They pressed on.

  They followed the slaver’s path back to the deep wheel ruts, the heavy grooves carved into the earth marking the caravan’s passage. The trail, once winding and uneven, eventually merged with a more intact roadway, one worn smooth by countless travelers over the years. Here, the going was easier, less treacherous terrain to navigate, but also far more exposed. They kept to the edge, using the tall grasses and scattered boulders as cover, but every step felt like they were walking a razor’s edge.

  By midafternoon, the sun had begun its slow descent, casting long shadows across the land. The light shifted, taking on the golden hue of approaching dusk, but the beauty of the Wildlands felt hollow in the face of what they were witnessing. There was no doubt about the caravan’s destination now. The road ahead led straight toward Ironhaven, the city of chains.

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  The caravan was still moving. Still dragging. Still carrying souls closer to the fate of true enslavement. The knowledge sank into the group like a weight too heavy to bear. The oppressive silence between them was not born from uncertainty, but restraint. Ella’s hand drifted toward her bow more often than not, her fingers flexing against the grip. Her sharp eyes never left the caravan’s distant path, every movement analyzed, every opportunity measured and discarded.

  Lianna’s tail lashed back and forth, her entire body radiating fury. Her posture was stiff, her shoulders locked in place as though restraining the urge to charge ahead and do something, anything, to stop this.

  Xavier, though outwardly composed, was no better. The urge to act, to intervene, to cut the chains and turn the tide of suffering burned in his chest like a smoldering ember. His Unyielding Liberator trait clawed at him, urging him forward, demanding that he break the cycle here and now. It would be so easy. He could close the distance, ambush the caravan under the cover of dusk, strike down the slavers before they ever reached the city. The plan flickered behind his eyes for a heartbeat too long and he knew that was exactly why he couldn’t.

  A single caravan was not the war, not the mission. To act now would be reckless. It would put them all at risk, blow their cover before they ever set foot in Ironhaven. This wasn’t just about freeing a handful of captives, this was about uncovering the truth behind the kingdom’s growing aggression. With a steadying breath, Xavier forced himself to stillness.

  "We keep trailing them." His voice was steady, but there was a weight beneath it, a steel edge that cut through the mounting tension. "If we rush or act rashly, we lose any chance of blending in and getting an idea of what’s actually happening." His gaze flickered between the two women. "Ironhaven must be close."

  Lianna opened her mouth as if to argue, but no words came. She knew the truth of it. They all did. With a sharp exhale, she clenched her fists, jaw tightening before she gave a reluctant nod. It was not agreement, only acceptance of a bitter reality. A single slave, even an entire caravan, was not worth the risk of the mission. Not yet. They needed to reach the heart of the problem. Needed to understand why the kingdom’s raids had increased, why Animari slavery had expanded, why this was all accelerating beyond what it had been before. That knowledge, the why, was their mission.

  It didn’t make the choice any easier. It didn’t lessen the weight of it, the suffocating, leaden burden that settled across their shoulders as they pressed forward, step by step, into the growing shadow of Ironhaven.

  Even Frostclaw and Valkra could sense the shift, and they moved closer to the group still moving through the tall grasses at the edge of the road.

  The snow leopard moved silently beside Lianna, his ears twitching, pale blue eyes locked onto the caravan’s path like a specter watching prey. He had seen the marks on the earth, smelled the blood. He knew what this was. He had been in this situation before with his mistress when they first escaped the Wildlands and made it to the relative safety of Silverwood.

  Valkra, smaller but no less attuned, padded at Xavier’s side, the fur along her spine bristling. She let out a low, rumbling growl, almost inaudible, but Xavier could feel the tension in her frame. She did not understand slavery, not as Lianna did. But she understood predators and she knew this place reeked of them.

  As the day stretched on, the signs of civilization grew more pronounced, but not in a way that brought comfort. The land itself felt different, less untamed, less free. The wind, once carrying the crisp scent of open plains and wild earth, now bore the stale, metallic tang of industry and the stink of smoke. The rolling grasses that had once danced unhindered beneath the sky were now reduced to hardened trails, trampled into submission beneath the relentless passage of boots, hooves, and wagon wheels.

  The details of the city were lit in the darkening sky by numerous torches and bonfires. This man-made light was supplemented overhead by three of the world’s celestial bodies. The crimson light of fiery Pyrrastra, the shadowy purple of Umbraeth, and the silvery light of Zephira, all shone down upon the world, and it seemed as if everything worked together to highlight the blight that was the city of chains. Ironhaven loomed in the distance, a monolith of jagged stone and iron, unwelcoming in every way. Its fortified walls rose unevenly, as though they had been patched over time with whatever material was available, a testament to a city that thrived not on beauty, but on brute function. The grime of countless years stained its surface, blackened by soot and filth, an ever-present haze curling from the countless chimneys that lined its skyline. The air was thick with the acrid scents of burned wood, smelted metal, and the sweat of bodies forced into relentless toil.

  Closer to the gates, the roads changed. The Wildlands had been cruel but beautiful wild nature. This, however, was something different, something deliberate. Iron spikes lined the edges of the path, some sharpened to vicious points, others fitted with rusted chains clinking in the breeze, their purpose unmistakable. Not just for defense but for warning. Some of the chains held forms upright and dangling. Most were dead or so close to it to have been a pointless difference, others were weeping or crying out in hoarse wails of pain as the weight of their bodies separated their shoulders. It caused the trio to pause for a moment until they remembered their disguises and pressed forward grim-faced.

  Wooden stockades and auction platforms stood in various states of disrepair, abandoned remnants of past sales, where captives had once been displayed like livestock to the highest bidder. Their splintered beams held the ghosts of countless transactions, stained with sweat, dirt, and the memory of shackled wrists. Above them, faded banners of merchant guilds hung from crude poles, their once-proud symbols marked over by the sigils of Arenvalis’ noble houses. Ownership stamps. Trade seals. A grim reminder that even misery had its patrons. And even from this distance, Ironhaven swelled with movement.

  Slavers and armored guards herded new arrivals toward the city gates, their captives moving in tight, controlled formations, shackled together in lines that stripped them of identity, reducing them to walking commodities. Caravans rolled in from the Wildlands, their wagons heavy with supplies, weapons… and bodies. Mercenary companies clustered near the main roads; their presence unmistakable. Weapons always within reach. Eyes always searching. Some lounged at makeshift camps, drinking openly, playing dice, waiting for contracts. Others watched the slaver groups with disinterest or approval.

  Xavier’s group slowed.

  "We’re here." Lianna’s voice was clipped, her expression carefully blank.

  Ahead of them, the caravan they had been tracking reached the gates. The one carrying the runaway. The guards at the entrance barely spared the slavers a second glance. The entire process was routine. Papers were checked. Coin was exchanged. Finally, captives were prodded forward. And just like that, they were gone. Swallowed whole by the monstrous beast that was the city.

  Ella, standing at Xavier’s side, exhaled softly. Her voice was quiet but edged with disgust. "I hate this place already."

  Xavier’s fingers tightened on Vaeltheris’ hilt the leather bindings squeaked under the pressure, his expression unreadable. "We’ll tear it apart one day."

  Ella didn’t disagree but today was not that day. They adjusted their postures. Xavier straightened, falling into the role of the mercenary leading his ‘property.’ Lianna and Ella lowered their heads, their steps measured, slipping into place as slaves. They did not look back.

  With that, they moved toward the gates and Ironhaven welcomed them with open jaws.