The stench of burning flesh hung in the air like a mourner's veil. Sir Alaric Thorne breathed through his mouth as he walked the perimeter of what remained of Duskhollow, his boots crunching over blackened timbers and the occasional brittle snap of something he refused to identify. Twenty-three winters had hardened him to many horrors, but this—this was different.

  "Nothing left to save," he muttered, sheathing his sword. The blade hadn't left its scabbard since they'd arrived. There had been no one to fight, no one to rescue. Just ash and silence.

  "That's the third village this month." Elysia stepped beside him, her mage's robes oddly pristine against the devastation. Magic shimmered around her fingers—a detection spell that cast eerie blue light across her severe features. "The pattern is expanding."

  "The King needs to know," Alaric said.

  "The King already knows." The voice came from shadows that seemed to peel themselves from a charred doorframe. Kivan, the monk, materialized like smoke given form. His eyes, reflective as a night predator's, surveyed the carnage with detached precision. "He chooses not to act."

  Alaric's jaw tightened. "Choose your next words carefully, Kivan."

  "Why? You know I'm right. While we chase embers, the fire spreads." The monk's tattooed hands flexed, ancient sigils crawling across his skin in response to his agitation. "The veil thins. What came through here isn't retreating anymore. It's claiming territory."

  A dry chuckle cut through their tension as Merrick dropped from a half-collapsed roof beam, landing with impossible lightness. The rogue flipped a silver coin between his fingers, the nervous gesture at odds with his laconic smile.

  "Pretty sure the royal recommendation is 'run and hide' these days," Merrick said, pocketing the coin. "Can't say I disagree. Look what happened to the brave folk of—" he paused, glancing around, "—whatever this place was called."

  "Duskhollow," Elysia said quietly. "They made the finest white wine in the Eastern Realms."

  "Made." Merrick's smile faded. "Past tense for everything now, isn't it?"

  Alaric turned away from them, squinting at the horizon. The sun was setting, casting long shadows that seemed to reach for them like desperate fingers. They had hours, at most, before traveling became suicidal.

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  "We make for Ironheart Keep," he announced. "We report what we've found."

  "You mean what we haven't found," Kivan corrected. "No survivors. No bodies. Just—"

  "Consumption," Elysia finished, closing her fist and extinguishing her detection spell. "Something came through and... absorbed them."

  Alaric refused to consider the implications. Four years of fighting what crawled through the veil had taught him to compartmentalize. Think too much about what they faced, and madness followed as surely as dawn followed night.

  "Mount up," he ordered. "We ride hard. No stops."

  As they gathered their gear, Merrick paused by a small wooden toy beside a ruined well. A child's doll, somehow spared the devastation. He reached for it, then hesitated as if it might burn him.

  "Leave it," Alaric said, harsher than intended.

  Merrick's eyes flashed. "Some of us still remember we're human, Sir Knight."

  "Being human is what gets you killed these days," Alaric replied, turning to his horse. "Being a Guardian is what keeps you alive."

  The sky darkened faster than natural, clouds rolling in like ink spilled across parchment. Elysia glanced up, her expression tightening.

  "That's not weather," she warned. "We need to go. Now."

  They rode from the ghost of Duskhollow as the first unnatural lightning split the sky, illuminating briefly what seemed to be vast, writhing shapes among the clouds. None of them looked back. None of them spoke of what they'd glimpsed.

  Some truths were better left unacknowledged, especially when the last kingdom of humanity hung by a thread, and they were the fraying edges of that final lifeline.

  Behind them, in the abandoned village, the child's doll began to melt, its wooden features running like wax as something beyond the veil reached through, tasting what remained of humanity's fading world.