The next day, they reached the edge of the Fold just before dusk.

There was no marker to greet them. No gate. No warning. Just asphalt giving way to sun-bleached rock and scattered weeds.

The soil turned brittle beneath their boots, baked to powder by the desert sun. Cacti stretched across the valley like they had been purposefully scattered. The hills ahead buckled and slumped as if they were being pulled in all directions at once.

No birds called here. No insects hummed. Only wind, dry and hollow, curling through the brush like breath from an angry god. The Fold didn’t greet travelers. It consumed them. And yet, Talon pressed forward with the measured resolve of a hardened soldier.

The light behaved strangely in the Fold, casting shadows in weird directions without cause. Perhaps it could no longer remember where it had been, or where it was going.

This place earned its name long ago. Back when the land here rolled in gentle ripples of green like fabric laid lovingly across the earth. There had been flowers once. Saffron windleaf and clover. Song birds and their gentle melodies. Squirrels darting between branches like children playing tag.

Life had thrived here. People had loved here.

But that was decades ago.

Now the name meant a different reality entirely. The Fold was no longer beautiful, nurturing or even forgiving. It was a place where the world creased under the strain of suffering, folding into itself like warm wax.

Talon noticed Kaela stiffen beside him. Her shoulders pulled tight, eyes tracking every shadow with new wariness. She could feel the wrongness here, the way the atmosphere pressed against them with malevolence. The way the soil itself seemed to repel anything good.

The Fold was a unique kind of poison, thick with decades of accumulated misery. It clung to visitors like smoke, seeping through pores until it hit the bloodstream. Even their footsteps felt like an intrusion.

And they had only just crossed into it.

Talon felt a pressure building in his ears the way it did when flying too high, too fast. He shortened his stride, in no hurry to reach whatever waited ahead. The tips of his wings instinctively tucked tighter against his back.

“Is this it?” she asked.

“You feel it before you see it.”

She did. The same unsettling vertigo as when standing too close to a cliff edge. When even the slightest hint of breeze could send you plummeting to your death.

The path narrowed as they descended, the soft sand giving way to slabs of fractured stone. On either side, ridgelines jutted upward like splinters, raw and crooked, as if the ground had ruptured from within. Their surfaces were scored with erosion and streaked with mineral stains, glinting faintly where runoff had cut grooves into the face of the rock.

The Fold was a wound in the landscape, carved open by the violence of the Fracture. It defied direction, balance, even time. Signals failed. Bearings slipped. Even the sun’s path across the sky faltered. There were stories of travelers losing whole days here, or waking to find they had backtracked without ever turning around.

“Why don’t the birds fly here?”

“Same reason people stay out,” Talon answered. “The sky is no kinder than the ground.”

Kaela felt her stomach clench with a sudden unease, the prickle of instinct when you’re being watched. Or, hunted.

Talon felt it, too. He stopped abruptly, pivoted, and scanned the edge of the ridge behind them. His wings pulled in. Shoulders squared.

Then they heard the danger. It was shrill, piercing and wrong. Not a scream, exactly. More like laughter.

Guttural, gurgled and wet, like a voice learning to mimic joy and gagging on the effort.

Kaela stiffened. “That’s definitely not a bird.”

“No,” Talon said grimly. “It’s not.”

Another laugh answered. Then another. A ricochet of cackling voices rose from the eastern ravine, followed by the scrape of claws dragging over stone.

Then the first one appeared.

It crawled from the shadows, a mass of mangled muscle stretched over elongated bones. Its jaws split at the hinge like its face had once tried to scream in both directions and got stuck that way. It staggered, shoulders lurching, ribcage exposed beneath patches of fur. Its head twitched at odd angles, as it sniffed for the scent of prey.

Kaela froze. Talon stepped between her and the creature.

It was a hyena, and its eyes were locked onto Talon and Kaela. It growled low, baring long, yellowed fangs.

Then three more emerged. One crested the ridge above them, silhouetted against the pale sky. The other two slithered up from the west, rising out of dry brush and loose rock. Jaws snapped as they closed in.

Talon slowly unsheathed the daggers on his hips.

“Kaela,” he snapped, not looking back. “When I move, you run. Left. Find a crevice and stay low.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue. I’ll be fine, you get somewhere safe.”

Her lips trembled. She gripped the charm around her neck. Then she nodded.

The first beast lunged.

Talon sidestepped the attack just enough for the claws to miss. He pivoted, using his left wing to knock the beast off balance. His blade came up, burying into its side with a grunt of resistance. The creature shrieked, a jagged and unnatural sound. But it didn’t fall.

The hyena twisted, mouth gaping in anatomical blasphemy. Its jaws snapped toward his throat. He ducked and swung his blade clean through the leg just above the knee. It whimpered and staggered back, dragging itself through the dirt.

Another one pounced.

Talon rolled, letting the force carry him across the dirt, wings flaring wide to catch momentum. He came up beneath the beast and drove his second blade up into its ribs. The creature writhed, twitching violently, and then slammed to the dirt face-first.

Two more circled, joined by the third that was bleeding from the cut in its side. Talon turned slowly, keeping his back low behind a rise in the scrub-covered slope, where the land dipped just enough to break a clean line of sight. Blood ran down his forearm, slow and hot. The scent was driving the hyenas mad. Their feral hunger had whipped into a frenzy that could no longer be satiated.

“Come on then,” he challenged. “How bad you want it?”

The creatures attacked together. And Talon rushed forward to meet them.

Kaela had done what Talon told her. She had hidden, crouched low behind a patch of thornbrush, nearly invisible in the long shadow cast by the setting sun. Her fingers dug into the sand to steady herself. Every breath was shallow, every muscle wound tight.

She could hear the fight in the distance. The clang of steel, the unnatural snarls, the rhythmic thud of movement as Talon danced with death just beyond her line of sight.

Then she heard another sound, and in a moment of terror, realized she was not alone. A hyena they hadn’t seen before was moving toward her. Each step seemed patient and deliberate, not clumsy or rushed like the others.

Kaela held her breath. Not out of choice, but because her body understood what her mind had not yet caught up to. Make no sound. Become the shadow.

This new creature was larger, and obviously smarter. This was the alpha, the leader of the pack. And it hadn’t come to fight. It had come to feed.

She saw it through the dry branches. Not bounding, not snarling. Just approaching. Slow, like it enjoyed the hunt. Like it wanted her to feel every moment between now and the end.

Its jaw hung slightly open, as if it had once been broken and healed wrong. Now it revealed too many layered and rotting teeth, slick with black spit that dripped from its gums. Its shoulders were hunched, causing its twisted spine to arch in the center. Its fur was patchy and slick, matted over scabbed flesh. Its eyes were hot, orange coals buried deep in cavernous sockets.

To Kaela, it looked like it was meant to be another creature entirely until its maker lost interest halfway through.

And now the wretched thing had locked onto her scent.

Kaela began to inch backward, moving slow and careful. A loose stone shifted beneath her knee, and she slipped. She caught herself on her elbow, but a dry branch snapped beneath her weight.

The creature froze. Then it snapped its head toward her, releasing a low, rattling growl. It sounded like gravel caught in the teeth of a metal gear.

She screamed.

Talon ducked low. Using his wings for balance, he kicked the nearest beast in its jaw. In the same motion, he thrust his blade into the throat of the second, dragging a wide arc of hot, black blood across the desert floor. The third lunged, claws like rusted hooks, but he twisted. It grazed his armor as he drove his elbow backward, shattering the creature’s skull with a wet crunch.

Talon’s breath came rough but steady, the rhythm of war still in his bones. One down. One maimed. One circling.

Then he heard it.

Her scream was sharp, primal, and laced with pure terror.

Kaela.

Talon felt his heart drop beneath his ribs, a sudden weight pulling against instinct.

There was no time to think, no moment to plan. The third hyena lunged from the brush, all muscle and hunger, but Talon was already moving. He met it mid-air, slamming shoulder-first into its chest. His wings snapped open just long enough to catch the wind and twist the creature’s momentum. Together they crashed into the dirt.

Before it could recover, his dagger found the soft place beneath its sternum. With one clean motion, he sliced a wet line across its body.

Then without looking back, he leaped to his feet and ran. Not toward cover, not toward safety. Toward her.

Kaela scrambled backward, her boots skidding in the loose sand. Her balance gave out, and she fell hard onto her back. The hyena’s eyes gleamed with sick, eager joy, and it salivated at the sight of easy prey. A long thread of drool dangled from its jaw as it slowly crept forward, patient and certain.

Its ribs jutted like broken branches beneath torn flesh, now fully visible as it emerged into the open. Its jaws had twisted into the imitation of a smile, lips curled high to expose every crooked, blood-stained tooth.

She laid on her back, gasping for breath, terror rooting her to the spot. Her voice caught somewhere deep in her throat, unable to rise.

Then the beast charged.

Kaela flinched, her arm flying up to shield her face. The beast’s jaws opened wide, angling for the soft flesh of her arm.

Closer now. Its breath hit her first. Hot, sour, and reeking of rotted meat.

She braced for the bite. For the pain. For the end.

But, just like with the Hollowframe days earlier, the end never came.

Instead, a sound like stone splitting clean down the center. The beast jerked mid-lunge, its momentum stolen as its body twisted sideways.

Talon had it by the nape of the neck. One hand, wrapped in steel and leather, had yanked the creature with such force that its spine gave way beneath his grip. With a final, violent shudder, its body went still. The hyena dropped at her feet in a heap of broken limbs.

Kaela didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps, chest hitching with each one. She didn’t cry, but her whole body trembled as if her skin no longer knew where fear ended and safety began.

Slowly, she opened one eye, peering through the shield of her trembling arms. A breath later, she opened the other. Both locked onto the corpse of the twisted hyena sprawled before her. Its limbs still spasmed in irregular pulses, nerve endings misfiring like it hadn’t yet realized it was dead.

Talon crouched beside her, reaching out to touch her trembling arm.

“Kaela,” he said, voice low, steady. “You’re safe now.”

She shook her head, an instinct caught between shock and disbelief.

“Hey.” His voice softened. “It’s over.”

Her glassy eyes could barely meet his, but when they finally did, she found only gentleness there. A calm comfort, enough to make her bottom lip stop quivering.

She glanced over at the corpse again. It had finally stopped twitching, its limbs splayed in the dust. With a deep sigh, she said, “I thought they killed you.”

Talon gave a faint smile. “Takes more than a few wild dogs to get past me.”

She looked up at him. “Thank you. For saving me.”

He smiled again and gave a small nod. A pause settled between them, hushed and even.

“Kaela, I will protect you. I will always protect you.”

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Promise?”

Talon’s smile faded, as the gravity returned to his eyes.

“I have better than a promise,” he said. “The word of a Skyguard is unbreakable. And you have my word.”

Kaela didn’t answer. At least, not with words.

Her eyes, wide and wet, searched his face. Not for reassurance, but for truth. And whatever she found there, it was enough. Her small hand reached for his, fingers trembling slightly as they laced into his.

She held on to him. It wasn’t a desperate grip. It was authentic. One that could only exist through genuine trust.

And Talon didn’t pull away. He let her stay close, allowing the moment to settle around them like a shield against the world. There were no more words to offer. Only the rhythm of heartbeats and a bond neither of them had expected.

An understanding passed between them.

Not the kind forged in passion or chosen in time. But the kind that was hushed, and fierce, and arrives without warning.

The kind a soldier doesn’t expect to survive long enough to feel.

The kind a father might feel for a child he didn’t know he had, or didn’t believe he deserved.

And in that moment, with her fingers interlaced with his, Talon felt his foundation shift inside him. Like a new part of him waking up. A sacred thing.

He had spent a lifetime as a guardian, sworn to protect, trained to endure. But this was the first time he truly understood what it meant to be someone’s shelter.

The moment lingered like the last streaks of sunlight before dusk. But as the wind shifted colder and sharper, reality returned with its usual burden.

They had to move.

Talon rose, eyes scanning the treeline one last time before turning back to Kaela. He gave a small nod of understanding, and then they walked in silence, the Fold pressing in on all sides.

By the time they found shelter, night had begun to fall over the sky, smearing violet and rose above the horizon.

The house was lodged into a slope of wind-packed sand, its siding long since peeled away by desert heat. The roof was intact, barely. Its exposed boards were sagging from years of deterioration. A brick chimney leaned at a frightening angle, as the base beneath it has sunken. The floor was littered with scorched insulation, and in one corner, the remains of a kitchen with old pots and pans on a counter.

Talon stepped carefully through the mess and set down his pack near what had once been a living room wall. The drywall bowed from rain damage, yet underneath the mold and grime, faint childlike scribbles were still visible. The conditions didn’t seem to bother him, clearly he was accustomed to making camp in ruined places.

Kaela stayed near the threshold. She didn’t move, just stared into the shadows that clung to the far corners of the room.

Talon glanced over. “You see another memory?”

She shook her head slowly. “No. I’m just listening.”

He gave a nod, leaning back against a scorched wooden support beam. With practiced fingers, he unwrapped a small parcel of dried fruit and held it out in silence. Kaela stepped away from the doorway and crossed the room, her boots shuffling across the dusty floor.

She thanked him for the fruit and began to eat. She chewed slowly, as if the sweetness was precious, and she might never taste it again. She wanted to hold onto it as long as she could.

The silence that followed wasn’t like before. It was thick with uncertainty, with feelings neither of them knew how to express. This was the kind of silence she knew too well from her past, heavy and suffocating. It unsettled her in a way that noise never could.

A few days ago, it wouldn’t have mattered. But now she had grown used to the low, steady rhythm of his voice. The way it filled the spaces without demanding anything in return. And in this stillness, she missed it.

She needed it.

Not for answers, but for an anchor.

So she broke the silence. “Does the ground remember, too?”

Talon looked up, thoughtful. As if he was surprised that he had never thought to ask the question himself.

“Yes, I think so,” he said softly.

He paused, running a hand along the warped floorboard beneath him.

“It holds the impression of footsteps. The voices of people who thought no one would ever hear them again.”

Kaela pressed her palm to the floor, mirroring him.

“Then maybe that’s why I can feel them,” she whispered. “Even when they’re gone.”

Talon nodded as he watched her crouch in the dust. What struck him wasn’t her power. It was the way she hadn’t turned cold. Not even now. Not after everything. She hadn’t hardened her heart to the world, not even to the parts of it that wanted her dead.

That kind of tenderness was rare. Not weakness, but strength, a very dangerous type of strength. He didn’t know if he could learn it, but he knew one thing for certain; he had to protect it.

That was when her eyes closed, and her eyelids began to flutter. Her body started to seize, sharp and uncontrolled. A moment later, she yanked her hand from the floor and stared at it, as if the wood had burned her palm.

“What did you see?” Talon asked, frozen still. “Another memory?”

At first, she said nothing. Just kept looking at the floor, pupils dilated, face pale.

“No,” she finally answered, her voice thin. “More like… a shadow. Darkness. And… pain.”

Talon exhaled slowly through his nose, leaning back with the kind of tiredness that lived deeper than muscle. “Well,” he muttered, “that pretty much sums up the Fold.”

After the people who had lived here were exiled or killed, the Dominion had turned this place into a Ministry site. A memory well was constructed beneath the floor; what the rebels called a “black archive” site. It wasn’t just a place for punishment. It was meant for a fate worse than torture. More final than death.

This was where names were taken when the Dominion wanted them erased completely. Rebels. Families. Entire bloodlines. Stripped from records, burned from archives, buried in protocol, and erased from collective memory.

The ground didn’t just remember. It grieved, mournfully and bitterly. As if the earth itself had learned to carry the secrets no one else dared to speak.

The shadow Kaela saw when she touched the floor was probably the darkest thing she had ever encountered. So dark that it was incomprehensible. Its malevolence defied shape or meaning. Whatever had happened here, whatever had been done, was so vile her mind recoiled from it. Her senses recognized only the evil, and couldn’t quite process the reality she was seeing.

Talon was grateful for that. If even a fraction of her innocence could survive another day, it was worth holding on to.

Later that evening, Talon rose and walked the perimeter of the site in slow, methodical loops. He moved with practiced discretion, scanning every shadow, every corner covered in cobwebs. He kept circling until he was certain they were alone, and that nothing would come for them in the middle of the night.

It was a habit. Old instincts die hard. But, more than that, it was for her. For her safety.

The more time he spent with her, the more he understood why Velien wanted her protected. Not that he was doing it for Velien. He was doing it for her. And maybe, just a little, for himself.

It felt good to carry purpose again. To take on the role of guardian, even if only for a little while longer.

When he returned, he found her sitting still, knees drawn to her chest, charm tucked beneath her chin. Her breath was slow and steady, and for a moment, he thought she was sleeping.

Then her voice found him.

“The boy came from here, didn’t he?”

“The boy?”

“The boy from the legend.”

Talon smiled uneasily. He knew the legend she meant. It was a famous one. Every culture had its own version, shaped by its own values, fears, and history.

It was one of those stories that had probably started with a sliver of truth. A name. A moment. An event. But over the years, it had been polished and bent, fed through whispers and retellings until it no longer resembled the reality that had sparked it. Now it was just another myth, wrapped in hope and wonder, but based on wishful thinking.

The Skyguard lore Talon had grown up with wasn’t so different from the Velari version Kaela had likely heard. Both told of a boy rising from the ashes of war, claiming Elaren’s Flame, and shattering the chains of Dominion rule.

But while the Skyguard believed it was set in the past, a legend that had never come true, the Velari saw it as a prophecy, a promise that it still might.

“Tavric,” he said with a nod. “That was his name. The legends don’t say where he came from, just that he—”

“He was born here,” she interrupted. “In this room.”

Talon’s jaw set, and his lips straightened into a line. He shook his head gently, and said, “Kaela, it’s a myth. A bedtime story. The tale of Tavric Val’Dareth was told to give hope to the hopeless.”

She shrugged her shoulders, still looking into the distance.

“Bedtime stories don’t ache like this,” she whispered. Then, with a sly smile, added, “They’re not this handsome, either.”

Talon laughed, despite himself. He tried to ignore the chill that crept up his spine.

After a while, Kaela’s eyelids began to droop. It had been a long, tiring day and the adrenaline rush from earlier had left her exhausted. She whispered good-night, curled her body against the wall, and held her charm tightly in her hand like a lullaby she didn’t have the strength to hum.

Talon watched her for a long time. Then, without a word, he removed his helmet and set it gently on the floor beside him. The air was cool against his skin, and it hit with clarity and the sudden realization that she wasn’t the only one who was tired.

He didn’t think about the Skyguard. Or Tyrillon’s reign. Or the whispers of a boy born in this room or anywhere else.

He thought of nothing beyond this moment.

Only her breath, steady now.

Only his vow, held close in his chest.

The war could wait. The myths could crumble. Right now, she was safe.

And he would keep her that way.

No matter what came next.