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Before I can push further, footsteps echo on the stairway. I flinch. The sound is too sharp, too loud. The door opens as Varam enters, his expression tight.

He frowns at me, maybe feeling the tension in the room or smelling the scorched air, then turns to Sacha. He speaks rapidly, pointing at the maps still spread out across the table.

“What is it?”

Varam stops speaking at my demand, and says something else. It sounds like a question.

Sacha shakes his head, then looks at me. “The Authority is planning a sweep of Ravencross. They’ve received information suggesting there might be a high-value target hiding here.”

“You?”

He nods.

I blink hard. The fire is still burning. My skin still feels wrong. It takes me a second to reorient, to move away from the argument, the shift in his eyes, the way his shadows moved.

"What does that mean for everyone here? For us?"

"It means we need to leave. Now." There's a finality in his tone that cuts through everything. He turns back to Varam, speakingrapidly, in a clipped tone. The older man's face pales slightly before he nods and hurries back up the stairs.

Our argument hangs suspended between us, unresolved but suddenly irrelevant in the face of immediate danger. The personal frustrations that felt so important moments ago shrink against the backdrop of whatever threat approaches.

“But no one knows about this place. Why do we have to leave?” My skin is still tingling. My head still aches.

“Because if we remain and we’re caught, everyone you’ve seen here will be put to death.”

“But—”

“The sweep begins at dawn. We need to be gone before then.” He rolls up the maps. “Pack only what you can carry easily. We’ll travel light and fast.”

“I don’thaveanything to pack.” He gives me a look that warns me now isn’t the time to argue again. “Where are we going?”

He pauses, head tilting as he considers what to tell me. “To one of the remaining hidden strongholds in the mountains. It’s several days’ journey, much of it through places the Authority doesn’t regularly patrol.”

“And then what?”

The look he gives me this time has very little patience in it.

“Then I continue what I started here.” His voice is flat again, back under control. But the way he glances at the fireplace isn’t casual. “And investigating your connection to this world’s magic.”

I want to argue. I want to scream. I want to tell him not to shut me out again. But he’s already made it clear that this isn’t the time,and I don’t know how he’ll react if I push too hard. Would he leave me here, and go without me? I can’t risk that. Whatever is happening between us, whatever truths remain unspoken, it will have to wait until this immediate threat has passed.

Varam returns, Mira beside him, and within moments, the chamber becomes a hive of activity. Mira hands me a pack made from cloth. She’s filled it for me. Clothes, a waterskin, dried food, and another pouch of Firebloom Resin—the little beads for my teeth. She speaks too quickly for me to follow, but her tone makes her meaning clear.

Take this. Be ready to move.

Sacha confers with Varam. I keep hearing the same word repeated—Ashenvale—over and over. I don’t know what it means. Just the way it makes my stomach knot.

I shoulder my pack, testing its weight against my spine. It’s not like the backpacks from home. There are no zippers or padded straps, just layered cloth and rawhide, pulled tight across my shoulders. It hangs lower, pulls in unfamiliar places, and heavier than I expected, but manageable.

“Are we taking the sandstriders?” I ask when Sacha finally turns his attention back to me.

“No.” He secures his own pack without looking up. “They are too distinctive. Varam will see they’re returned to the nomads. We’ll travel on foot through the mountain passes.”

The enormity of our situation begins to sink in. We’re about to flee into mountains I’ve never seen, hunted by forcespowerful enough to make even these seasoned fighters uneasy. And Istilldon’t know whether I’m walking beside heroes or fugitives.

"What if we're separated?" The question escapes before I can stop it, revealing more vulnerability than I intended. In this world, I'm functionally mute, barely able to communicate my most basic needs. For all my anger, if I lose him, I lose everything.

Something shifts in Sacha's expression—a brief softening of the hard lines around his eyes, a momentary crack in the mask he wears. His gaze meets mine directly for what feels like the first time in days.