They moved before dawn, shadows still long and the sky veiled in hues of steel and smoke.
Reven led the way, his cloak trailing behind him like a fading scar, his eyes fixed on the rising sun as if it held answers. Lirien drifted a few paces behind, almost ghostlike in her movement. Kaela took the rear, watching their flanks, her senses on edge.
The path east wound through what the old maps called the Ashroads - a stretch of desolate, blackened wasteland where even the wind moved like it was trying to forget. Nothing lived here. Nothing dared.
It wasn't always like this. Once, it was a borderland of villages, outposts, merchant tracks. Then came the Purge. Then came silence.
"This place smells like a grave," Kaela muttered.
"It is," Lirien said without looking back.
Reven kept his pace steady. "Eyes ahead. We're being watched."
Kaela's hand dropped to her weapon. "Scouts?"
"Too quiet for scouts," Reven said. "But not quiet enough to be alone."
They passed burned husks of wagons, rusted armour half-buried in the dirt. A lone standard jutted from the ground, its banner torn, the Sigel faded beyond recognition.
As the wind shifted, a low chime echoed through the air. Hollow. Mechanical.
Lirien froze. "You hear that?"
Reven nodded. "Metal. Chain resonance."
Kaela narrowed her eyes. "Traps?"
"Not traps," Reven said. "Markers."
He knelt beside one of the ruined carts and brushed aside the ash. Beneath, a series of steel totems had been placed, shaped like wings, impaled in the earth, each etched with Old Tongue runes.
Lirien crouched beside him. "These are Skyborn burial signs."
"No," Reven said. "They're warnings."
The wind picked up again. But this time, it carried something with it - a pulse.
Not a sound. Not a breeze. A presence.
Kaela's blade was halfway drawn when the ground began to tremble.
From beneath the ash, figures began to rise.
They weren't alive - not in the way that mattered. Wrapped in ancient armour and bound by chains of rust and glowing thread, they moved with jerking, fragmented grace. Reven rose slowly, face grim.
"Gravebinders," Lirien whispered. "Skyborn reanimation tech. Failed prototypes."
Kaela stepped forward, blade low. "Failed?"
"They keep moving," Reven said, "long after their minds are gone."
The first one lunged.
Kaela met it with steel. Her blade bit into its throat, but no blood came - only dust and sparks. She twisted, shattered the head clean off, but the body kept moving for several seconds before collapsing.
Two more followed.
Reven pulled his sidearm - a compact, magnetic scatterbow and fired. The bolt embedded deep into the nearest Gravebinder's chest, pulsing with energy before detonating. The force blew it backward into two more, knocking them into the ash.
"They're slow," Kaela said, cutting down another. "But there's too many."
Lirien didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed on the horizon.
"They're not attacking to kill," she said. "They're funnelling us."
Reven followed her gaze. A ridge of obsidian rock loomed ahead, jagged and sharp like broken teeth. At its centre, a narrow pass.
"They want us to go there," Reven muttered.
Kaela glanced at him. "So what do we do?"
"We let them think we are."
He fired another bolt, this time at a pile of buried totems. The explosion kicked up a wall of dust and debris. Reven moved fast, grabbing Kaela by the arm and pulling her with him into a collapsed gully on the side of the path. Lirien vanished behind a shimmer of refracted light, Skyborn cloaking veil. Reven had no idea how long she could hold it.
They waited. Silent. The Gravebinders shuffled toward the ridge, drawn to the decoy trail.
After long minutes, the sound faded.
Reven climbed out first, checked the horizon, then nodded.
Kaela pulled herself up beside him. "Who the hell left Gravebinders out here?"
Reven looked toward the ridge. "Someone who knew we were coming."
Lirien reappeared with a shimmer. Her eyes were cold. "This wasn't random. This was planned. And that means someone else is looking for the Archive."
By nightfall, they'd reached the rim of the Glass Basin.
Once, this valley held a city. Reven could see the outlines of roads, buildings, towers - frozen in time, melted into abstract shapes of obsidian and warped metal. A burn from the sky, older than the Wraithforged. Maybe even older than the war.
The basin stretched wide and deep, a bowl of jagged death. And somewhere beneath it, the path to the Archive.
Kaela shook her head. "That's a tomb."
"No," Reven said. "It's a map."
He raised the crystal again. This time, it pulsed stronger, resonating with something below. A beacon.
"We camp here," Reven said. "We move at first light."
Lirien raised a brow. "You sure we'll find anything down there?"
"No," he said. "But they're looking too. And if we don't get there first…"
Kaela finished the thought. "They'll burn the past before we can learn from it."
Reven looked out over the basin. The wind howled through the valley, singing a song of forgotten names and buried truths.
"We go down at dawn."