By the time the sun rose—watery and gray behind clouded skies—they had found the first scorched clearing.
It was unnatural.
The trees surrounding it hadn't burned outward from a central flame. Instead, each trunk was blackened from the inside—as if fire had bloomed within them, splitting bark and boiling sap. The air smelled not of smoke, but of static, and the coppery sting of overused magelight.
Torren crouched beside one of the trees. "This wasn't wildfire."
Evelyn knelt beside him. The earth was littered with fine white ash—too fine to be wood or leaf.
"Corefire," she whispered. "But... wrong."
Torren nodded slowly. "Echoed signs. Something fought here."
The clearing stretched almost a mile, ending at a wide gash in the land. A broken trench, as if something massive had crashed through the woods, gouging deep into the soil.
And along the trench walls, they saw it.
Slashes of silver heat. Glowing threads like veins of frozen lightning.
Torren exhaled slowly. "A Warden passed through here."
Evelyn said nothing.
Her hands itched.
Each time her gaze passed over the luminous scars in the earth, the shard within her chest stirred—responding. Calling.
Torren looked at her with caution. "You feel it again, don't you?"
"Yes." Her voice was low.
"You think it's... the same as the shard you touched?"
"No. Worse. Broken."
They followed the trench downhill, avoiding exposed core-burns. Evelyn began to recognize the symptoms: plants near the path were withered and colorless, their life essence drained; water pooled unnaturally in cracked depressions, glimmering faintly blue.
All of it suggested something deeply wrong.
And the dreams were worsening.
Evelyn hadn't told Torren—hadn't said how last night the silver-eyed woman had whispered in a language she almost understood. Or how the flames in the dream had danced to the rhythm of her own pulse.
"You were born to burn," the dream had whispered. "Not to flicker."
She kept walking.
By late afternoon, they found signs of struggle: a shattered blade, half-buried in soft earth; a crushed helm marked with the symbol of the Eastern Reach; clawmarks on a rock, too large for any normal beast.
Torren lifted the helm and swore. "This is fresh. Within days."
"Do Wardens patrol alone?" Evelyn asked.
"No. Never. Not unless they're desperate."
Or dying, she thought.
Torren stood and scanned the treeline. "We should turn back. If this thing died here—"
"It didn't die." Evelyn's voice cut sharp.
He turned to her. "What?"
"I can feel it. It's still alive. Barely."
"You're guessing."
She shook her head. "No. I hear the shard. It's crying. Like something left open too long."
Torren hesitated. "That's... not how these things work, Evelyn. You shouldn't be able to sense that."
She gave him a long, steady look.
"I'm not how things are supposed to work."
Silence passed between them like a drawn blade.
Finally, Torren nodded. "Then let's find the damn thing."
They followed the trench into twilight.
As stars emerged overhead—distant, distorted—Evelyn's step quickened. The shard within her pulled toward something not far now.
And below the hill, beyond the treeline, the ground still smoldered.
Tomorrow, they would reach it.
The broken Warden.
The bleeding core.
And something waiting in the smoke.