Byfox had fallen long before the Mirrorwood took it.

  The city had not been swallowed in an instant, nor consumed in the unnatural stillness that had frozen Moorpond in time. Byfox had been gutted first— brought to ruin by mortal hands before the creeping dark ever reached its gates.

  The first sign of what remained was the noble estate, or what was left of it. Once, it had been the heart of Byfox, a grand house of wealth and influence, with tall windows that caught the sunlight and banners that fluttered from the towers. Now, it stood as a ruin. A skeletal wreck of blackened stone and collapsed timber, bones half-swallowed by the ashen ground. What fire had not devoured had crumbled beneath the weight of the Mirrorwood. Charred beams jutted at odd angles from the rubble, the remnants of upper floors that had caved inward, burying whatever had been left inside. The main hall, where lords and ladies and honored guests had once gathered, lay open to the sky. Its vaulted ceiling had long since collapsed, its archways twisted and broken. The walls still bore scorch marks, dark streaks trailing like clawed fingers toward the heavens.

  Unlike Moorpond, where the Curse had simply stopped time, Byfox had suffered its end in full. The Cleansing had taken this place before the Mirrorwood ever had the chance. And the dead were still here to prove it.

  Their presence lingered— not in the unnatural stillness of those lost to the Curse, but in the remnants they had left behind. Scattered through the ruins, half-buried beneath soot and debris, lay the first true corpses they had seen on this journey— or what remained of them. Skeletons curled in unnatural shapes, their brittle fingers clutching at nothing, their bodies left where they had fallen. Some had once worn fine silks, their fabric reduced to nothing but fragile scraps clinging to bone. Others had died in armor, rusted plates still buckled tight around leg bones, helmets cracked and blackened where the heat had been worst.

  These were not the untouched, unbreathing figures frozen in Moorpond’s eerie half-life. These people had not simply vanished. They had burned.

  The acrid scent of old ash and something sickly sweet clung to the ruins, curling in the cold air like a presence of its own. It wasn’t decay— not exactly. It was the ghost of fire, of destruction that had burned so hot and fast that it had left its mark in the very bones of the earth.

  Brandon lifted a hand to his face, his nose wrinkling at the stench. “Jesus,” he muttered. “It still smells like—” He stopped short, his gaze flickering over the twisted remains of a charred wooden beam. His jaw tightened.

  “Like death?” Melissa offered, crouching near a skeleton half-buried in the soot. The ribs were hollowed out and blackened along the edges. The skull was still intact, tilted at an unnatural angle as if its owner had fallen mid-motion, hands stretched toward something they had never reached. “They didn’t die to the Curse,” she said, brushing ash from the exposed bones with careful fingers. “This was fire.”

  Julia stood beside her, arms crossed, her gaze scanning the ruined estate. Its hollowed windows stared back at them like empty eye sockets, watching their every moment. “Two years ago,” she murmured. “When Byfox fell.”

  Annemarie swallowed. “The Cleansing.”

  The words settled over them like dust, heavy and suffocating.

  She had known they would find this. They all had. The fall of Byfox had been recorded, spoken of in hushed voices, a tragedy acknowledged but never fully reckoned with. They had known it was coming, that the Cleansing had reached beyond Swynden, spreading through the noble houses of Milana like a controlled blaze, burning away anything tied to the House of Tormevi.

  But knowing it and seeing it were two very different things.

  Brandon exhaled sharply, dragging a hand through his hair. “We knew this was coming. We knew we’d find—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “Never mind.”

  Because the truth of it sat in front of them, in the brittle bones and scorched stone. Unlike Moorpond, where the people have simply ceased, bodies never rotting— Byfox had bled first.

  There had been screams here. There had been a struggle.

  Melissa wiped a hand over her forehead, even though the air was cool. “Is it just me, or does it feel like we’re—”

  “Drowning?” Julia supplied.

  Melissa pointed at her without looking up. “That.”

  Brandon pressed a hand to his chest, fingers splaying slightly as if testing the weight of the air. His heart was hammering too fast, his breath heavier than it should have been. “Merris said the Mirrorwood rejects anything untainted. Maybe this is how it starts.”

  Brenna, who had been standing apart from the group, rolled her shoulders uncomfortably. She adjusted the strap of her pack. Normally, she carried herself with easy confidence, but now her gaze was distant, unfocused. “It’s worse here than in Moorpond,” she muttered, voice low. “More... aware.”

  Julia frowned, turning toward her. “You mean the Curse?”

  Brenna exhaled through her nose. “I mean this place.”

  No one responded immediately. They didn’t have to— they all felt it.

  The Curse had not taken Byfox in the same way it had consumed other places. It had reached it late, after the damage had already been done. After fire and violence had already hollowed out the city. But that did not mean the Mirrorwood had ignored it.

  Something was still here.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Annemarie barely heard them. The pressure in her skull was growing, the pull forward intensifying, a slow, steady heartbeat that was not her own.

  She turned toward the ruins of the noble estate, staring past the blackened walls, past the scorched remnants of what had once been a house of power, wealth, and history. Of Callista Nazenne.

  The bond was leading her there. And she had the horrible, suffocating feeling that someone was waiting for her to arrive.

  The burned-out manor loomed over them, skeletal and broken, its blackened stone walls barely standing beneath the weight of time and ruin. What had once been the proud estate of House Nazenne, a symbol of wealth and power, was now little more than a graveyard. The land around it was ashen and lifeless, the ground cracked and dry where gardens had once flourished. Ivy, brittle and colorless, curled feebly around scorched columns, as if even nature had tried to reclaim this place and failed. The silence that pressed down upon them was heavy, thick with the remnants of old smoke— a scent that should have long since faded.

  The grand entrance hall had once been lined with banners bearing the Nazenne sigil, but now only charred remnants of fabric remained. They clung to the walls like ghostly shrouds. The ceiling was gone, and the upper floors collapsed inwards, leaving jagged beams stretching skyward like the ribs of some long-dead beast. Debris littered the ground, half-melted candlesticks, shattered glass, fragments of what might have been fine furniture now reduced to unrecognizable blackened husks. A grand staircase still stood, though barely, its steps warped and uneven, the banister scorched beyond repair.

  But the worst part wasn’t the destruction. It was the bodies— and they were everywhere.

  Brandon exhaled slowly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Saints preserve us.”

  There was no preservation here. Only the echoes of what had been.

  The air inside the ruined manor was thick with soot and silence. Their footsteps stirred the ash, kicking up small, ghostlike tendrils of dust that clung to their boots and refused to settle. No one spoke as they moved deeper into the estate, past doorways that gaped open like mouths, past walls scorched so black that the old tapestries had burned into them. They left only faint, shadowy impressions of what had once hung there.

  The dining hall lay ahead. Its doors had been blown inward— whether by fire, force, or something else, none of them could say. Inside, the long wooden table remained eerily intact, though its surface was warped with heat and covered in a layer of ash so thick it dulled the once-polished wood. The chairs, though blackened, still stood in place, arranged as if waiting for a meal that would never come.

  And around the table, five skeletons sat. Two adults, three children.

  Brenna exhaled sharply through her nose, stepping forward before she even realized she was moving. She barely heard the others behind her, barely noticed Julia’s quiet intake of breath or the way Melissa shifted uncomfortably, her usual bravado slipping in the face of something so fundamentally wrong. Because this didn’t make sense.

  She counted again. Two adults. Three children.

  The adults sat at either end of the table. The larger skeleton, broad-shouldered even in death, had been seated in the head chair. The smaller one, presumably his wife, had slumped slightly to one side, her bony fingers still curled against the table’s edge. Between them, the children sat neatly, their fragile skeletons still small and delicate.

  And there was the problem. There should have been four.

  Brenna’s mind worked through the knowledge she had, turning over facts like pieces of broken glass. It made sense that Callista’s skeleton wasn’t here— she was alive, after all, somewhere beyond this ruined city.

  But Callista had another sibling. And that sibling’s body was not at this table.

  Her brow furrowed, her fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. The Cleansing had taken all of House Nazenne, burned them in their own home, left their remains to sit in these charred ruins like a twisted monument to history’s cruelty. There was no reason why one of them should be missing.

  Brenna swallowed hard. “This isn’t right.”

  Brandon glanced at her incredulously. “No part of this is right.”

  “No,” Brenna said, sharper this time. “There’s someone missing.”

  Julia’s gaze snapped to her. “Who?”

  Brenna hesitated. “I’m not sure. But Hiram II Ettaria and Vevra Nazenne had five children: Callista, Jochem, Turel, Aida, and Hiram III. All named after relatives.” She gestured at the skeletons at the table. “This accounts for three of them.”

  Melissa frowned. “And the fourth?”

  Brenna shook her head. “They should be here. But they’re not.”

  The silence that followed felt heavier than the ash in the air.

  Annemarie’s hands curled into fists. The pull in her chest, the constant drumbeat of the bond, was still guiding her forward— westward, ever westward. But the realization settled over her uneasily, yet another pressure to consider. Brenna was right.

  If Callista was the only survivor of the massacre of Byfox, her entire family should have died here. But there were only five bodies.

  Where was the sixth?

  The fire had long since burned out, but its remnants still clung to the ruined stone. Soot streaked in the cracks, the bricks warped from unbearable heat. Ash pooled in the crevices of the floor, gathering like dust over the years. Untouched by time, by wind, by anything at all. It was as if the room itself had been sealed away from the world and left to rot in silence.

  Brenna crouched beside the fireplace, brushing a gloved hand over the blackened stone. “Duchess Vevra Nazenne was one of Kiernen’s strongest supporters,” she said, voice devoid of its usual wry humor. “Loyal. Loud about it. Even with the threat of the cleansing, she refused to run.”

  She gestured toward the table, to the remains of what had once been a family. “Someone came here and made an example out of her.”

  Julia crossed her arms, her gaze flickering between the skeletal figures, to the ruined walls, to the darkened corners of the room where the fire had not reached. “But Callista survived.”

  Brenna exhaled sharply. “Apparently.” She rocked back on her heels, glancing toward the gaping remains of what had once been a doorway. Beyond it, the sky stretched heavy with clouds, the Mirrorwood pressing at the edges of the world. “The Curse came later. Two years ago, this was just a pile of corpses and ruined stone. But then the Mirrorwood crept in and took the rest.”

  Brandon shook his head, running a hand through his hair, his jaw tight. “But if one of the siblings escaped too—”

  Julia finished the thought before he could. “They might still be alive somewhere.”

  The words settled over them, sinking deep, heavy with implications none of them had fully considered.

  Annemarie’s fingers curled against her sleeve, her breath shallow. The bond had never faltered, never wavered. It had always led her toward Callista. But now, standing here in the ruins of the Nazenne estate, staring at the bones left behind, a question crept in.

  They had come looking for Callista. But what if they weren’t just chasing one Nazenne survivor? What if there were two?