The wind changed at dawn.
Jonas woke to the scent of iron—not blood, but deep iron. Ancient. Buried. His tongue tingled, his fingertips prickled. Something was calling him.
He rose silently, leaving the hut where Caldra still slept, her arm slung across her stomach like a weary guard dog.
The village was quiet. Mist clung to the ground like a reluctant ghost.
Jonas followed the feeling—more instinct than sense—through the outer alleyways of Thornrest until he reached the eastern wall.
There, hidden behind a thicket of deadwood and blackened vines, was a collapsed segment of the stone barrier.
His hands moved without thought, brushing over the rubble, reading the history written in each grain. Burn scars. Pressure fractures. Blood once spilled across the mortar. But beneath all that—vibration.
A relic. Small. Close.
Buried in the wall itself.
He reached in. The moment his fingers touched it, the world stilled.
The relic was no larger than a coin. Smooth. Black, yet glimmering faintly with shifting color beneath the surface—like oil in moonlight.
It was cold. Then hot.
Then—
"You were always here," a voice whispered. Not aloud. Inside. Deeper than memory.
Jonas staggered back.
A burst of flavor hit his mouth—salt, fire, copper. His tongue burned. His hands went numb.
Images flooded his mind:
A battlefield drenched in rain.
A warrior screaming with no tongue.
A relic, this relic, pressed to someone's skin—sinking into them. Changing them.
He fell to his knees, panting.
The relic lay in his palm, no longer hidden. No longer dormant.
And in the back of his mind, something had opened.
Caldra found him an hour later, still kneeling in the dirt.
Her eyes flicked from his face to the relic. She swore.
"Damn it, Jonas. That's a Mindshard. You touched it raw?"
He looked up. "It spoke to me."
She grabbed his wrist, examined his fingers. "No burns. No lesions. Praxis didn't reject you…"
"Should it have?"
Caldra didn't answer. She just pocketed the relic and hauled him to his feet.
"You've just painted a target on your spine, Reeve. Thornrest's not safe anymore."
They returned to find the village in quiet chaos.
The guards were gone from the gates. Villagers whispered. Caldra moved quickly, pressing her presence into the air like a blade, barking orders.
"Pack light. Two hours. Anyone who wants sanctuary in Alarshold rides now."
"Where are the guards?" Jonas asked.
"Gone," she said. "The Sensorium came back last night. Paid them off. Promised wealth. Relic safety. You know how it goes."
Jonas didn't. But he was learning.
A boy ran up to them—eight, maybe nine, his face smudged with soot and panic.
"They said we should give you up," he told Jonas. "Said you're a ghost-walker. That your power's wrong."
Jonas knelt down. "Do I scare you?"
The boy hesitated, then shook his head. "But the air's weird around you. Like thunder before a storm."
Caldra glanced at Jonas. "You need to leave. Now."
They left Thornrest by a northern trail—a half-forgotten hunter's path that wound through skeletal pine trees and mist-wreathed ridges. Only a dozen refugees followed.
Jonas carried the Mindshard in a pouch, but its voice was in his blood. He could feel it humming beneath his skin.
Not words, exactly. But direction. It was leading him.
To something bigger.
Maybe even the rest of it.
That night, they made camp by a frozen stream.
Caldra cooked thin meat over the fire while Jonas sat apart, watching his fingers twitch and pulse. His senses were sharper than ever.
He could feel the texture of moonlight on his skin. Taste distant fire in the wind.
He caught Caldra watching him.
"You're more than unmarked," she said. "You're unbound. The Praxis doesn't just flow through you—it's trying to become you."
Jonas shook his head. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"Doesn't matter." She paused. "Neither did I, when I first touched my relic. You don't get to choose your war, Reeve. Just your side."
As the fire died low, Jonas looked to the stars.
Somewhere out there, kingdoms hoarded senses like dragons hoarded gold. Relics lay buried, forgotten, or claimed by tyrants. Power was bought, stolen, bred.
But Jonas had stumbled into something else.
A sixth path.
Untouched. Unclaimed.
He didn't yet know what it meant. But he could feel it—like the taste of lightning in the back of his throat.
And he wasn't going back.