They left the cleft at first light. The copied parchment sat sealed inside a waxed pouch against Selene's chest, warm from her body heat and heavier than any scrap of skin and ink had a right to be.
The Name-Stone's low hum faded behind them within the hour, but the cold it had left in the air clung to their clothes and the horses' manes like a bad habit that refused to quit.
The return road should have been faster. It was not.
By midday the horses had gone from steady to twitchy. Aiden's mount kept tossing its head, ears flat, as if something invisible kept brushing past its flanks. Selene's gelding danced sideways at every shadow.
By mid-afternoon the dead pines along the ridges leaned inward more sharply than they had on the way in, trunks angled like crooked fingers pointing at the path. The ash-grey soil showed fresh tracks that belonged to nothing with four ordinary legs.
Selene reined in hard and stared at the ground. "These weren't here when we came through."
