The northern road was supposed to feel safer.

  Three days had passed since the Observatory. Three days since they'd sealed the First Seal and walked away from Draakenwald's corrupted heart with their lives barely intact. Three days that should have brought relief, restoration, a sense that the world was beginning to heal.

  Instead, Calven Whitefang walked at the front of the column with his hand resting too heavily on his sword's pommel, his shoulders tight with a tension that had nothing to do with the road ahead and everything to do with whatever was happening inside him.

  Behind him, the rest of the White Fang spread out in their usual formation. Kaelis Cinderwind ranged ahead on the flanks, her Lyfan grace turning scouting into something between reconnaissance and performance art. She'd disappear into the scrub oak for twenty minutes at a time, then reappear without warning, somehow both vigilant and irreverent in the same breath.

  Varden Stoneweave walked with his characteristic Dvarin steadiness, though his attention was fixed on the runestone tablets he carried. Every few hundred yards, he'd stop, take readings, and mutter something that sounded halfway between prayer and profanity.

  Bram Tavers struggled with an overloaded pack that seemed to grow heavier with each mile, his sandy hair plastered to his forehead with sweat despite the mild weather. He'd reorganized their supplies three times this morning alone, convinced he could find a more efficient configuration if he just tried hard enough.

  Brayden Vale maintained perfect military posture despite the mud, despite the exhaustion, despite everything. His hand never strayed far from his sword, and his eyes never stopped cataloguing potential threats. He was Tyrian's bodyguard by oath and training, but somewhere over the past few weeks, he'd become something more—a true member of this strange, deadly family.

  Tyrian Blackwood walked near the middle of the group, quieter than usual. His pale eyes tracked the tree line with the kind of focus that meant he was listening to things the rest of them couldn't hear. Since the Observatory, his echo-sensitivity had sharpened to the point where even standing still seemed to require effort, as if he were constantly filtering a thousand whispered conversations just beyond normal perception.

  Camerise drifted at the rear, her four Suryani arms wrapped around herself despite the mild spring weather. Her golden hair had lost some of its usual luster, and there were shadows under her eyes that spoke of nights filled with dreams that weren't entirely her own.

  "You'd think," Kaelis called from somewhere in the scrub oak to their left, her voice carrying that particular tone of forced levity that meant she was more worried than she wanted to admit, "that sealing a gods-damned Well would at least buy us a week of peace. Maybe some sunshine. A parade. Definitely better food than whatever Bram's been cooking."

  "Hey!" Bram protested. "My stew last night was perfectly edible!"

  "Edible and enjoyable are two very different things, sunshine."

  "You'd think," Calven said flatly, his voice cutting through the banter like a blade.

  The humor died in Kaelis' throat. She reappeared on the road, her wind-touched grace making her landing soundless despite the muddy ground. Her usual grin faltered as she studied Calven's profile.

  "You alright, Captain?"

  "Fine."

  "You've been 'fine' for three days straight," Kaelis said, her tone shifting to something more genuine. "That's concerning. You know what's also concerning? The growling."

  Calven's jaw tightened. "I'm not—"

  "You absolutely are. It's subtle, but it's there. Like a wolf with indigestion."

  Brayden caught Kaelis' eye and shook his head minutely. Not now. She grimaced but backed off, falling into step beside Bram instead.

  They'd all noticed. How could they not? Calven had been different since the Observatory. Sharper. Angrier. His reflexes were faster—inhumanly so. His senses were keener—he'd spotted a deer at a hundred yards yesterday in dense fog. But there was something wrong beneath it all. Like watching a bowstring pulled just shy of snapping, holding that terrible tension for days on end.

  Tyrian had noticed too. Of course he had. He'd been watching Calven with quiet intensity for days, saying nothing but seeing everything. The way Calven's pupils sometimes seemed to narrow vertically. The way his teeth seemed slightly longer when he snarled in frustration. The way his shadow, in certain lights, seemed just slightly wrong—as if something massive and predatory was standing just behind him, wearing his shape like an ill-fitting cloak.

  The forest around them felt wrong too.

  Not corrupted—not the way Draakenwald had been, with its twisting roots and sleepwalking beasts and air that tasted of copper and nightmares. This was subtler. The birds called at odd intervals, their songs slightly off-key. The underbrush rustled with movement that never resolved into animals. The light through the canopy seemed to shift too quickly, too strangely, like the sun couldn't decide where it belonged in the sky.

  "Varden," Tyrian said quietly, falling back to walk beside the Dvarin. "Are you feeling it?"

  Varden looked up from his tablets, his dark eyes thoughtful beneath heavy brows. "The echo residue? Aye. It's… persistent."

  "We sealed the First Seal three days ago."

  "I know, lad."

  "So why does it feel like the pressure's still building?"

  Varden's expression darkened. He glanced at his runestones, then at the forest around them, then back at Tyrian. "Because it is."

  The words hung in the air like a death sentence.

  "Explain," Tyrian said.

  "The harmonic baseline should be stabilizing. We sealed the rupture, contained the worst of the corruption, established a temporary equilibrium." Varden's fingers traced patterns on one of his stones, and it pulsed with sickly light. "But look at this. The readings are increasing. The echo pressure is building from a different direction entirely."

  "Another Seal."

  "Aye. And whatever's happening to it, it's already affecting the environment this far south." Varden pocketed the stone with the kind of careful movement that suggested he didn't entirely trust it not to explode. "The Wells don't operate in isolation. They're connected—networked, somehow. When one destabilizes, it creates pressure on the others."

  "Like cracks spreading through ice," Tyrian murmured.

  "Exactly like that. And lad?" Varden's voice dropped even lower. "We're standing on very thin ice indeed."

  They stopped for a midday rest near an old wolfwatch tower—one of the crumbling sentinels that dotted northern Avaria from the old wars. The structure was more moss than stone now, its crenellations worn smooth by decades of rain and wind. Wildflowers grew in the cracks between stones, and somewhere high in the remaining walls, birds had made nests.

  It should have been peaceful. Picturesque, even.

  Instead, it felt like a monument to something dying.

  Bram started a small fire with practiced efficiency, his hands moving through the familiar motions even as his eyes kept darting to the tree line. Kaelis climbed the tower's broken stairs with casual grace, perching on what remained of the battlements to scan the horizon. Brayden checked weapons and gear with methodical precision, his military training showing in every economical movement.

  Camerise sat cross-legged near the fire, her eyes distant and unfocused. All four of her hands rested loosely in her lap, but her fingers twitched occasionally, tracing patterns in the air that only she could see.

  "Dream-walking?" Tyrian asked, settling down beside her.

  "Trying not to," she admitted. "But the Dreamfall is so thin here. It's like… like trying to keep your eyes closed in a room full of candles. The light still gets through."

  "What are you seeing?"

  Camerise's hands stilled. "Water. Always water. Glowing from beneath. And something coiled in the deep—something vast and broken and so, so hungry." She looked at him, fear naked on her face. "It knows we're coming, Tyrian. Whatever's at the Second Seal—it's aware."

  Before Tyrian could respond, Calven's voice cut through the quiet.

  "I'm going to check the perimeter."

  He walked away before anyone could object, moving with that new, predatory grace that set all their teeth on edge.

  Tyrian approached him anyway. Found him standing at the northern edge of the ruins, staring toward the distant hills with an expression that belonged on a much older man's face.

  "You're growling," Tyrian said without preamble.

  Calven blinked, surprise flickering across his features. "What?"

  "You've been growling. Under your breath. For the last hour."

  Calven's hand went to his throat, fingers pressing against his Adam's apple as if he could physically stop whatever sound was emerging from him. "I… didn't notice."

  "I know." Tyrian moved to stand beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. He followed Calven's gaze toward the distant hills, seeing nothing but trees and sky and the faint suggestion of mountains beyond. "What are you feeling?"

  "Wrong." The word came out harsh, bitten off. "Everything feels wrong. Like there's something just out of sight, watching. Waiting. Hunting."

  "The Wells?"

  "I don't know." Calven's hand tightened on his sword hilt, knuckles going white. "It's not like before. At the Observatory, the corruption was there. Tangible. I could see it, smell it, fight it. This is… it's in my bones, Tyrian. It's in my teeth. Like something's trying to claw its way out from inside me."

  Tyrian studied his friend—his captain, his shield, the man who'd saved his life more times than he could count. Calven's eyes were slightly too bright, catching the light in ways that human eyes shouldn't. His breathing was slightly too controlled, each inhale and exhale measured like he was restraining himself from something. There was a tension in him that went beyond stress, beyond fatigue, beyond anything Tyrian had seen in their years together.

  "We need to talk about what's happening to you," Tyrian said quietly.

  "Not now."

  "Calven—"

  "I said not now." The words came out harder than intended, almost a snarl. Calven immediately winced, turning away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap. I just—I can't. Not yet. Not until I understand it myself."

  "You're scaring the others."

  "I'm scaring myself." Calven's laugh was bitter. "Do you know what it's like, feeling your own body become something you don't recognize? Hearing your voice drop an octave when you're angry? Wanting to hunt things that you used to just fight?"

  "Then let us help—"

  "How?" Calven spun to face him, and for just a second—just a heartbeat—his shadow didn't match his body. Something larger. Something with fangs. "How do you help with this? Varden doesn't know what's happening. Camerise is barely holding herself together. And you—" He stopped himself, shaking his head. "You have enough to deal with."

  "You're my responsibility too."

  "I'm your captain. Your shield. I'm supposed to protect you."

  "And you do," Tyrian said firmly. "Every day. But that doesn't mean I can't protect you back."

  Calven looked at him for a long moment, something complicated and painful moving behind his eyes. Then he reached out, gripping Tyrian's shoulder with enough force to hurt.

  "Promise me something," he said, his voice low and urgent. "If I lose control—if I become something that can't be reasoned with—you'll do what needs to be done."

  "Calven—"

  "Promise me."

  "No."

  The flat refusal seemed to startle Calven more than any argument could have.

  "No?" he repeated.

  "No," Tyrian said again, meeting his eyes without flinching. "Because you're not going to lose control. Because whatever this is, we're going to figure it out. Together. Like we always do."

  "You don't know that."

  "I know you." Tyrian's hand came up to cover Calven's where it still gripped his shoulder. "And I know that whatever's happening—bloodline awakening, Wells corruption, or something else entirely—you're still in there. Still fighting. Still you."

  "For how long?"

  "As long as it takes."

  From the tower, Kaelis' voice cut through their moment. "Uh, Captain? You're going to want to see this."

  The humor was gone from her tone entirely.

  The road below was packed with people.

  Not soldiers. Not merchants. Refugees.

  From their vantage point on the tower's remaining battlements, Tyrian counted at least forty families, maybe more. Wagons piled high with whatever they'd managed to carry. Children walking barefoot through the mud, too tired to cry. Elderly folk leaning on younger shoulders, their faces hollow with exhaustion. They moved with the desperate, mechanical determination of people who'd been walking for days and still had days more ahead of them.

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  "Northern farmlands," Brayden murmured, appearing beside Tyrian at the tower's edge. His eyes catalogued the refugees with military precision. "I recognize some of the regional clothing styles. These are border families—people who've been living on the frontier for generations."

  "Running from what?" Kaelis asked, though her tone suggested she already knew the answer.

  "Let's find out."

  By the time the Fang descended from the tower, the lead wagon had stopped. A gray-haired woman with a merchant's practical clothing and a farmer's weathered hands stepped forward, eyeing them warily. Her hand rested on a long knife at her belt—not threatening, but ready.

  "Mercenaries?" she asked. Her voice was rough, like she'd spent too many nights shouting orders or too many days breathing smoke.

  Calven nodded. "The White Fang. What's happened?"

  "What hasn't?" She spat to the side, the gesture eloquent. "You haven't heard?"

  "We've been… occupied."

  The woman's laugh was bitter enough to curdle milk. "Well. While you've been 'occupied,' the north's been going to hell. Animals don't sleep anymore. They attack anything that moves—deer, wolves, even the gods-damned rabbits. Had a pack of deer—deer, you understand—try to break into the Thornstead granary two nights running. Killed three guards before we drove them off."

  "Corrupted wildlife?" Varden asked, stepping forward. His expression had gone grim.

  "If that's what you want to call it." The woman gestured at the column behind her, at the hollow-eyed families and the children who'd stopped playing weeks ago. "But that's not even the worst of it. People are sleepwalking. Just… get up in the middle of the night and start walking. We've lost six to the lakes in the past week. Just walked right in and drowned, eyes open the whole time. We tried tying them down, but they fought like demons to get free."

  Camerise made a small, wounded sound.

  "And the lights," someone else added—a younger man with a farmer's build and a blacksmith's scarred hands. "Over the sea cliffs. Every night, there are lights. Like something glowing under the water. Blue-white, pulsing like a heartbeat."

  Tyrian's spine went rigid. Ice trickled through his veins.

  "Describe them," he said, his voice sharper than intended. "The lights. Describe them exactly."

  The man blinked, taken aback by the intensity. "Blue-white, like I said. Pulsing. My daughter swears she heard singing—said it was beautiful, said it was calling her name. We got her away from the cliffs before—" He swallowed hard. "Before whatever it was could take her. But she still hums it sometimes. The tune. Won't tell us where she learned it."

  Tyrian looked at Camerise. Her face had gone pale, all four of her hands pressed against her temples like she was trying to hold her skull together.

  "The Second Seal," she whispered. "It's already stirring. Already bleeding into the world."

  The refugees shifted uneasily at the mention of Seals. The gray-haired woman's expression hardened, fear and anger mixing in equal measure.

  "You're Well-hunters," she said. Not a question. An accusation.

  "We are," Calven confirmed.

  "Then for gods' sakes, do something." She turned back to her people, voice rising to carry over the exhausted column. "Move along. We're not stopping until we're past Brighthold. Maybe not even then."

  "Where will you go?" Bram asked quietly.

  "South. Far south. Maybe to Castaria, if they'll take refugees. Maybe farther." Her eyes found Tyrian's, and there was something desperate in them. "The world's ending from the north down. We're just trying to stay ahead of it."

  The column resumed its slow, exhausted march south.

  The Fang watched them go in silence that felt like drowning.

  They made camp that night in the lee of the old tower, close enough to the ruins for shelter but far enough that the crumbling stones wouldn't fall on them in the night. No one suggested pushing on to an inn or village—the unspoken agreement was that they needed privacy for this conversation.

  Varden spread his instruments across a flat stone, taking readings with increasing agitation. Every few minutes, he'd make a note, mutter something in Dvarin that sounded profane, and take another reading.

  Kaelis prowled the perimeter like a caged animal, her usual grace replaced by nervous energy. She'd climb a tree, scan the horizon, drop back down, pace for ten minutes, and repeat the cycle.

  Bram cooked something that smelled better than it had any right to given their limited supplies. Rabbit stew with wild herbs, thick enough to stand a spoon in. He worked with mechanical focus, like if he just concentrated hard enough on the simple task of cooking, the world might stop falling apart around them.

  Brayden cleaned his blade with methodical focus, the rhythmic shink of steel on whetstone a meditation in violence.

  Calven stood watch at the edge of camp, a dark silhouette against the twilight. He hadn't moved in twenty minutes.

  Tyrian sat with Camerise by the fire, watching the flames dance and trying not to think about glowing water and songs that called people to their deaths.

  "Talk to me," he said quietly.

  Camerise was silent for a long moment. Then: "The dreams have changed."

  "How?"

  "Since the Observatory. Since we sealed the First Seal." Her voice was threadbare, worn thin by exhaustion and fear. "I used to see the Seals as… distant lights. Candles in the dark. Warnings written on the horizon. Now they're clearer. Closer. Like I'm being pulled toward them whether I want to be or not."

  "How many can you sense?"

  "Three." She held up three fingers, all of them trembling. "The First Seal—we stabilized it, but it's not quiet. It's not healed. It's like… like covering a wound without cleaning it first. The infection is still there, still spreading, just slower. Hidden."

  Tyrian's stomach dropped. "And the others?"

  "The Second is worse. Much worse. It's not just failing—it's been failing for years. Decades, maybe. And we never knew because it's underwater, hidden, singing its corruption into the deep where no one could hear." All four of her hands were shaking now. "And there's a third, farther away. Across water. Across distance that makes my head ache to sense. But…" She looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "It's already beginning to wake. They're connected, Tyrian. When we sealed the First, we changed the pressure on all the others. We might have just… accelerated everything."

  The words hit like a physical blow.

  "You're saying we made it worse."

  "I'm saying we didn't fix anything." Camerise's laugh was brittle, breaking. "We bought time. Maybe weeks. Maybe less. And in the process, we might have condemned half the world."

  "Then we use the time we have."

  "To do what? Run from Seal to Seal, patching holes in a dam that's already breaking? Playing gods with forces we don't understand?"

  "If that's what it takes."

  "You have too much faith in us."

  "I have exactly enough faith in us." Tyrian reached out, taking one of her trembling hands in both of his. "We survived the Draakenwald. We sealed the First. We'll find a way."

  "Will we?" She looked past him at Calven's silhouette, dark against the dying light. "What about him? What happens when he stops being Calven and becomes… whatever this is turning him into? What happens when you have to choose between saving the world and saving your friend?"

  Tyrian had no answer for that.

  The fire crackled. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled—or something that sounded almost, but not quite, like a wolf.

  Varden approached, his runestones clicking softly against each other like teeth. "I have readings," he said, lowering himself to sit cross-legged by the fire. "They're not good."

  "Define 'not good,'" Kaelis said, appearing from the darkness with her characteristic silence.

  Varden held up a stone that glowed with faint, erratic pulses—like a heartbeat struggling to find its rhythm. "The harmonic baseline across northern Avaria has shifted. This should be steady. Predictable. Like a metronome. It's not. Look at this pattern."

  He traced the pulses with one thick finger. They spiked, dropped, spiked again in irregular intervals.

  "The echo residue we've been feeling?" Varden continued. "It's not leftover corruption from Draakenwald. It's new corruption, propagating from a different source entirely. And it's spreading faster than anything I've ever seen."

  "Seal II," Tyrian said.

  "Yes. And if it's already affecting the environment this far south, this far inland…" Varden trailed off, shaking his head. His expression was troubled in ways that the stoic Dvarin rarely showed. "The Second Seal's degradation is more advanced than the First was when we found it. Significantly more advanced."

  "How long do we have?" Brayden asked, joining them by the fire. He'd finished with his blade and now sat with military straightness, ready for orders.

  "I don't know, lad. Days? Weeks? The Wells don't follow predictable patterns. They respond to… intent, somehow. Consciousness. They're not just natural phenomena—they're something else. Something that thinks."

  "Then we move fast." Tyrian stood, looking at each of them in turn. His friends. His family. The people who'd followed him into nightmares and out the other side. "We push north at first light. Find the Second Seal. Stabilize it if we can."

  "And if we can't?" Bram asked quietly. He was still stirring the stew, but his hands had stopped shaking.

  No one answered.

  Because they all knew the truth.

  If they couldn't seal it, the world would bleed.

  Tyrian took the middle watch, sitting on a broken piece of the tower's wall with his cloak wrapped tight against the night chill. The forest was quiet—too quiet. Even the insects seemed reluctant to make noise, as if the world itself was holding its breath.

  He closed his eyes, reaching for that sense that had grown sharper since the Observatory. The echo-sensitivity that let him feel the Wells, the Seals, the fractures spreading through the world's foundation like cracks in old glass.

  It was there. Distant but undeniable. A pressure building to the northwest, toward the coast, toward water that glowed with wrongness. Like a string pulled taut, vibrating at a frequency just below hearing. Like a bell that had been struck once and would ring forever.

  The Second Seal.

  He could almost hear it now. Not with his ears—with something deeper. A song without words. A call without voice. Beautiful and terrible and hungry.

  So hungry.

  "Can't sleep either?"

  Tyrian opened his eyes. Calven stood a few paces away, his expression unreadable in the starlight. He moved differently now—quieter, more economical, like every motion served a purpose.

  "Too much to think about," Tyrian said.

  Calven climbed up to sit beside him. For a long moment, they sat in companionable silence, two friends watching the stars wheel overhead.

  "I'm losing control," Calven said finally. His voice was raw. "I can feel it. Whatever's happening to me—it's getting worse. Faster."

  "I know."

  "You're not afraid?"

  "Of you?" Tyrian looked at him—really looked at him. At the familiar features made strange by shadow and starlight. At the friend who'd saved his life more times than he could count. "Never."

  "You should be." Calven's voice was rough with something that might have been grief or might have been rage. "I'm afraid of me."

  "Then we figure it out. Together."

  "What if there's nothing to figure out? What if this is just… what I'm becoming? What the bloodline was always meant to turn me into?"

  "Then we deal with that too." Tyrian's hand found Calven's shoulder, grounding them both against whatever was coming. "You're not alone in this. You've never been alone in this. As long as I'm breathing, you won't be."

  Calven's laugh was shaky but genuine. "How do you do that?"

  "Do what?"

  "Make impossible things sound manageable. Make the end of the world sound like just another problem to solve."

  "Practice." Tyrian smiled faintly. "And stubbornness. Mostly stubbornness."

  They sat together under strange stars—the constellations subtly wrong, as if the sky itself was shifting—listening to the too-quiet forest, waiting for dawn and whatever it would bring.

  Tyrian woke to Kaelis shaking his shoulder with more force than necessary.

  "We've got company," she said, her voice tight with controlled urgency. "And they're not friendly."

  He was on his feet in seconds, hand moving to his sword hilt with muscle memory. The camp was already alert—Brayden at rigid attention, Varden clutching his runestones with white knuckles, Bram wide-eyed behind a supply crate with a kitchen knife in his shaking hand.

  Calven stood at the perimeter, perfectly still. Perfectly focused. A predator that had scented prey.

  "Where?" Tyrian asked.

  Kaelis pointed northeast, toward the ridge that overlooked their camp. "I counted at least four. Maybe six. Dark cloaks, military movements, professional spacing. They're not bandits."

  "Scouts?"

  "Worse." Brayden's voice was grim with certainty. "Look at the way they're positioned. Those are observation posts. Overlapping fields of view. Professional discipline. They're not planning to attack—they're watching."

  "Watching us," Camerise whispered. All four of her hands were pressed against her chest, like she could physically hold her heart in.

  Tyrian moved to stand beside Calven, following his gaze toward the ridge. At first, he saw nothing but trees and pre-dawn mist. Then—there. A flicker of movement among the pines. A flash of dark fabric that might have been a cloak.

  Gone as quickly as it appeared.

  But it had been there.

  "Tiressian colors," Brayden said quietly, moving to stand on Tyrian's other side. "I'd bet my blade on it. That particular shade of black with silver trim—that's Diplomatic Corps observation teams."

  "Why would Tiressia care about us?" Bram asked, his voice slightly too high.

  "Because we're Well-hunters," Varden said, his Dvarin accent thickening with anger. "And the Wells crisis is no longer Avaria's secret. Someone talked. Someone always talks."

  Tyrian felt the weight of that truth settle in his chest like a stone sinking into dark water. They'd hoped for more time. Time to understand what was happening. Time to prepare. Time to figure out what the Seals actually were before the world's powers started moving their pieces on the board.

  That time was gone.

  Burned up like morning mist in sunlight.

  "We break camp," Calven said, his voice carrying the kind of command that made soldiers stand straighter. "Now. If they want to watch, let them watch us disappear."

  Within minutes, the Fang was packed and moving. They abandoned the road entirely, cutting northwest through the forest toward the coast. Toward the Second Seal.

  Toward whatever was waiting for them in the glowing deep water.

  As they walked, Tyrian felt it again—that building pressure, that sense of something vast and terrible stirring in its sleep. Like a leviathan turning over in the depths, its movement causing waves that would reach shore eventually.

  And somewhere far to the northwest, beyond sight but not beyond his echo-sensitive perception, he felt it.

  The sea glowed briefly.

  Just for a moment.

  Just enough to know they were running out of time.

  The coastal cliffs appeared through the trees near sunset—sheer walls of gray stone dropping away to churning water far below. The path they'd followed had grown steadily narrower, more treacherous, until they were forced to walk single-file along what might have once been a game trail.

  Kaelis stopped at the forest's edge, one hand braced against a pine tree as she stared.

  "That's not natural," she said. Her voice had lost all its usual humor.

  None of them argued.

  Because she was right.

  The sea was wrong. Fundamentally, impossibly wrong.

  It wasn't storming. Wasn't violent. The waves moved with almost mechanical precision, their patterns defying the wind that blew across the surface. The water itself seemed to glow faintly—a blue-white luminescence that pulsed like a slow, terrible heartbeat.

  And in the distance, if Tyrian squinted against the dying light, he could see it.

  Something moving beneath the surface. Something massive. Something that left trails of bioluminescent light in its wake, like a fallen star dragging itself through the depths.

  "Seal Two," Camerise breathed. She'd gone pale, all the color draining from her golden skin. "It's close."

  "How close?" Calven asked. His hand was on his sword, though what good steel would do against whatever was out there, Tyrian couldn't imagine.

  Camerise closed her eyes, and Tyrian watched her reach out with senses he didn't fully understand. Her four hands moved in subtle patterns, tracing harmonics in the air.

  When she opened her eyes again, they were wide with fear.

  "Close enough to touch us," she whispered. "Close enough to know we're here. Close enough to be calling to us."

  As if in answer, the glow intensified.

  And Tyrian heard it.

  Distant. Wordless. Beautiful and terrible and wrong in ways that made his bones ache.

  The Wellsong.

  It wrapped around him like silk and thorns, pulling at something deep in his chest. Something that wanted to answer. To step forward. To walk to the cliff's edge and keep walking, out over the empty air, down to the glowing water below.

  He took a step forward without meaning to, drawn by compulsion he couldn't name.

  Calven's hand locked around his arm with bruising force.

  "Tyrian. Don't."

  The contact broke the spell. Tyrian blinked, gasping like he'd surfaced from deep water. His heart was racing, breath coming too fast, and he could still hear it—the song, the call, the beautiful terrible hunger.

  "I heard it," he said. "Did you—"

  "No." Calven's grip tightened until Tyrian felt his bones creak. "What did you hear?"

  "Singing." Tyrian looked back at the water. The glow was fading now, sinking back into the depths like a whale returning to pressure and darkness. "The Second Seal is calling. And it knows my name."

  "To you specifically?" Brayden asked, moving closer with his hand on his sword.

  "Maybe. I don't know." Tyrian forced himself to step back from the edge, though every instinct screamed at him to walk forward. "But it knows we're here. It's been waiting for us. And now that we've arrived…"

  He didn't finish the sentence.

  He didn't need to.

  They made camp a safe distance from the cliffs, posting double watches and tying a rope around Tyrian's waist—just in case the song came again in the night.

  No one slept well.

  The Wellsong echoed through all their dreams, beautiful and broken and calling them home to the deep.

  THANKS FOR READING!

  Well. That escalated quickly, didn't it? The First Seal was supposed to buy them breathing room, but instead, everything's accelerating. And Calven's transformation is getting harder to ignore—did you catch that moment where his shadow didn't quite match his body? The proto-Varkuun awakening is real now.

  What do you think is calling Tyrian from the Second Seal? And more importantly, should he answer? Also, how worried should we be about Tiressia watching them? Those aren't just random scouts—that's the Diplomatic Corps, which means this just became political. Drop your theories in the comments!

  Next episode: The Fang gets closer to the ocean than any of them wants to be. The Wellsong gets louder. And something rises from the deep…

  Next update: Wednesday! Don't forget to add The White Fang to your reading list so you never miss a chapter.

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