"Get your hand off that relic, boy!"
Azrael flinched as the barked command shot through the morning air, sharp as flint. He'd only brushed the edge of a cracked stone carving half-buried near the southern gate; a jagged slab retrieved from the ashes of Morrin's Outpost. But now half a dozen warriors turned to stare at him like he'd touched fire.
"I wasn't going to do anything," Azrael said quickly, backing away.
"You don't know what that thing holds," grunted Barek, who'd emerged behind the group. His eyes were lined with fatigue and soot. "They said part of the stone was pulsing yesterday. Echo residue."
"Echo?" Azrael repeated.
"It's god-magic," muttered another hunter. "What's left when their power leaks into matter. That stone's cursed."
Veyna, who had been quietly cataloging the ruins with other Monochrome envoys, finally stood from her crouch. "It is not cursed," she said softly. "But it is not meant to be touched by hands that are unsure."
Azrael turned, stung by the phrasing.
"I'm sure," he lied.
"No," Veyna said, "you are allowed."
---
Later that afternoon, Azrael sat alone at the edge of the training yard. His bow rested beside him, untouched. His fingers ached from the morning's drills three hours of stance correction and target work. He hadn't hit the mark once.
From the middle of the yard, the laughter of other young initiates carried on the wind. One of them, Eron, a brash, broad-shouldered boy with a braided beard stub, shouted, "Try not to shoot your own foot next time, Danigrasse!"
"Try not to lose your jaw next time, Eron," Janis muttered nearby, tying new fletching to her arrows.
Azrael glanced at her, grateful, but didn't smile. He felt more like a rock in a stream tossed, eroded, never stable.
"Are you going to keep falling apart every time someone laughs?" Janis asked, not unkindly.
He shrugged. "Maybe."
"You survived a tusk-back."
"And failed every training since."
"You're not here to be good yet," she said. "You're here to be better than yesterday."
"Some days I feel like I'm worse than yesterday."
Janis didn't reply right away. Instead, she reached into her satchel and tossed him a dried berry cake. "Eat. Thinking is a luxury for people with full stomachs."
Azrael bit into it and grimaced. "Tastes like moss."
"Because it is. Mossberry. Grows near the hollow cliffs."
"I'd rather starve."
"Too bad. You're not allowed to die before you learn to aim."
---
That evening, a gathering was held in the longhouse. Not a celebration no drums, no fire dances. Just a meeting. A solemn one.
The six families that bordered the Morrin trail had requested an update. The Council sat in a circle of stone benches, Veyna standing in the center with a charred fragment of Morrin's breathstone vault in her arms.
"This," she said, "was not destroyed by fire alone."
Murmurs. Eyes narrowed.
"What does she mean?" someone asked.
"Look closely."
She passed it around. Azrael sat near the rear wall, next to his mother Kelea, who said little but watched everything.
"It's melted," said a smith.
"But the pattern…" said a Seer from Earthscript. "Those grooves weren't carved. They were etched."
"Etched by what?"
"By something ancient," Veyna answered. "A relic perhaps. Or something worse."
Varros Danigrasse leaned forward. "Worse?"
"There are records few, forbidden of objects touched by a god's full power, not Echo. Not trace. Actual will."
The room froze.
"If something like that was hidden at Morrin, and has now been awakened or shattered, the effects may ripple across the tribes. We need to search the region carefully."
"And who will lead that?" asked Elder Grell.
Veyna's gaze moved again to Azrael. "I want to take a small group. One that won't attract too much attention."
He blinked. "Me?"
"You're not yet a threat. You're invisible. That's exactly what we need."
Azrael stood halfway, then sat again. "I don't think I can..."
"You've already touched what others feared."
He didn't argue.
---
The next morning, the cold came early. Snow kissed the hills outside Danigrasse Vale. Azrael, Janis, and Veyna prepared to travel east toward the broken edge of the cliff where Morrin's ruins still smoked.
Barek watched them from the gate. "Try not to die," he said to Azrael.
"Thanks for the motivation."
"You sure you're not taking too much baggage?" he added, eyeing Azrael's satchel.
"I'm light. You just lift heavy."
Janis stifled a laugh. Veyna only turned.
"We leave now."
And with that, they walked.
Three figures beneath a gray sky, heading toward ash.