Rael’s POV
The bone city spread out before me, a maze of skeletal arches and jagged spires that loomed in the dark. I moved ahead of the group, my boots crunching against brittle fragments on the frozen ground.
The air smelled of decay, like earth left untouched for years, and the wind carried faint howls that didn’t sound natural. I had slipped away from the camp while the others slept, not because I was restless, but because something told me the path ahead wasn’t safe.
Scouting was my excuse, but it was more than that. I needed space to think, to feel the silence without the others watching. My bone mark, the jagged scar on my arm from my tenth birthday, throbbed faintly, and I knew it had picked on something I couldn’t sense. The city around me felt wrong, its shadows shifting jus
