The wind howled like a grieving spirit.
It scraped across the cliffside path, carrying dust, whispers, and the faint scent of pine from the forest far below. Above them, the sky stretched grey and cold, the sun a pale smear behind high clouds.
Xerces walked at the front, hood pulled low, the spell of illusion flickering faintly with each step as if his magic were fighting to hold itself together. Mira followed just behind, her boots slipping occasionally on the loose rock, but her gaze never left the back of Xerces's cloak.
Sael trailed them both, always watching. Always quiet.
He hadn't spoken much since they'd left the village behind. Not when Mira tried to start a conversation. Not even when Xerces had quietly offered him the lead, sensing that the man knew these wild paths better than either of them.
He said nothing.
But he didn't leave.
It was on the third day—when the cliffs gave way to a stretch of broken valley—that Mira finally snapped.
They were setting up camp beneath a leaning stone arch, a relic of some lost civilization. Mira was stacking kindling for a fire when she turned to Sael, hands on her hips.
"You know," she said sharply, "it wouldn't kill you to talk to us."
Sael didn't look up from where he was sharpening his blade. The rhythm of metal on stone didn't change.
"We've been traveling for days," she continued, stepping closer, "and I still don't know why you're here. Why you haven't left us. Why you even care."
Silence.
Then: "Because I made a mistake."
Xerces, seated nearby with a thread of black energy drifting from his palm into a broken rune-stone, lifted his head.
Mira blinked. "What?"
Sael finally stopped sharpening.
"I made a mistake," he said again, quieter this time. "One I've been trying to undo for three years."
He stood, sliding the dagger back into his belt.
"I had a brother," he said. "Younger. Smarter. More naive."
Mira's expression softened immediately.
"He believed the stories about magic. About the Nocturne. Thought they were just old myths twisted to keep children afraid at night. He wanted to see them. Study them."
He looked out across the craggy field, jaw tight.
"I took him to the edge of the Deadwind Hollow. Just to let him see what the world really looked like. I thought I could protect him."
Xerces already knew where this was going.
"I turned my back for five minutes. When I came back…" Sael's voice caught. "He was gone. Just… gone. All I found was a trail of dried blood and a sigil carved into a tree."
He unwrapped the cloth around his left wrist and showed them a brand burned into the skin—an angular crescent flanked by bone-like wings.
Xerces went still.
The mark of the Crimson Veil.
Mira reached toward it, then stopped herself.
"I've been hunting them ever since," Sael said. "But I'm no mage. No noble. No one with armies. Just a knife and enough rage to keep me moving."
He looked up, eyes locking with Xerces's.
"Then I saw you. The way you fought that thing. I saw the magic in your bones. And I thought—maybe this is the monster I've been waiting for."
Xerces stared at him.
Not with pity. Not with judgment.
With understanding.
"You want revenge."
Sael's smile was bitter. "Don't we all?"
For the first time, a silence settled between them that didn't feel cold. Mira looked between the two men, then took a deep breath and sat beside the fire.
"I'm not here for vengeance," she said, brushing her hair back. "But if I'm already marked… if I'm already part of whatever's coming… I want to be more than just a pawn."
Sael nodded, slowly.
Xerces stood and walked to the edge of the cliff. The wind pulled at his cloak, revealing for a moment the faint gleam of bone beneath the illusion.
"We're all bound to something now," he said.
He turned back to them—no longer as a leader, or a lich, or a man running from his past—but as something more.
A being with purpose.
"We head north. To the ruins of Varkir Hold. There's a vault beneath it. One that once held scrolls the Nocturne tried to burn out of existence. If I can find what's hidden there, I may learn how to sever the tether between Mira and the Devourer."
"And the Nocturne?" Sael asked.
"They'll come," Xerces said. "They always do."
He looked to the horizon, eyes burning beneath the glamour.
"But next time, I'll be ready."