Chapter 107

*Kaelen*

The path to the Shrine wasn’t marked.

No signs. No carved runes. No whispers in the stone like the leylines that had guided me for weeks. Just silence. Not the dead kind, either—but the ancient kind. The kind that made the forest hush and the wind fold in on itself. The kind that said, go back even as the air pulled you forward.

We went anyway.

The four of us moved as one—Rowan at my side