The wind off the peaks tasted like rust.
Daniel knelt by the first wooden stake.
He reached out, his fingers brushing the ruined academy badge pinned to the wood.
The metal was pitted with corrosion.
It didn't feel cold like his own.
It felt dead.
"How many?" Lily asked.
Her voice was barely a whisper, swallowed instantly by the vast emptiness of the valley.
Daniel didn't count them.
He didn't want to.
There were dozens stretching up the path, like a graveyard of failed promises.
"All of them," Daniel said.
He stood up, wiping the gray grime from his fingertips onto his trousers.
Behind them, the path back to the academy was gone, hidden by a thick, unnatural fog.
The only way was forward.
Into the Ashen Mountains.
They walked for hours in silence.
The ground beneath their boots grew brittle, cracking like old bone with every step.
Lily kept her hand near her weapon hilt.
Every shadow looked like a threat.
Every silhouette of jagged rock looked like a crouching horror.
"Daniel," she said, stopping suddenly.
He paused, looking back over his shoulder.
"Look at the sky."
Daniel looked up.
The bruised-iron clouds weren't moving.
They were swirling in a slow, tight circle directly above the highest peak.
Like a whirlpool.
"The air is changing," Lily said, her grip tightening on her blade. "It's too quiet."
She was right.
In the lowlands, there was always the sound of shifting gravel or distant wind.
Here, the silence was absolute.
It pressed against their ears until the sound of their own heartbeats felt dangerously loud.
Then, the badges on their chests grew burning hot.
Daniel hissed, pressing a hand over the silver emblem through his cloak.
It felt like a branding iron.
"Lily, drop to the ground," he commanded.
They threw themselves behind a shattered black boulder just as a sound tore through the valley.
It wasn't a roar.
It was a low, scraping sound—like a heavy iron chain being dragged over broken glass.
From the fog ahead, a figure emerged.
It walked slowly, its limbs jerking with an unnatural, broken rhythm.
It wore the tattered remnants of an academy cloak.
But where its face should have been, there was only empty, swirling ash.
An Ash-Walker.
And it was holding a broken academy blade.