Alisha kept her hand on Telaryn’s back as they stepped away from the altar. The faint light had gone, but the sense of watching had not. Something had shifted—nothing visible, no tremor of the earth, yet the village felt _deeper_, as though layers long buried had creaked open behind the world.

Tuaru motioned them to leave the shrine. He said nothing more.

Outside, night was folding itself over the peaks. The fire in the central square sputtered, casting long shadows. The Veyari gathered around it, some murmuring old verses, others simply staring at Telaryn with a mixture of wonder and dread.

Alisha stood at the edge of the firelight, her arms crossed against the cold that hadn’t lifted since the trial. But it wasn’t the mountain wind that chilled her.

Something had shifted in Telaryn’s expression—more composed, more distant. As if her blood had fed something that now looked back through her eyes.

Alisha’s breath fogged in front of her lips, too shallow.

“She’s changing,” she whispered. No one heard. Or perhaps they did, but chose silence.

In the dark corners of the shrine-village, wind moved without breeze. Small stones rattled along the slope. In the sky, the moon thinned behind clouds—but the stars above the mountain ridge shimmered in ways she’d never seen.

When Alisha turned back toward the shrine, she saw it:

A figure—no, a smudge of shape—watching from within the stone ring. There was no face. No movement. But it was there.

Her heart stumbled in her chest.

She blinked—and it was gone. But the sense of its presence lingered like breath on the back of her neck.

Then the voice of one of the elders cut the quiet: “The blade does not sleep. It only waits for a hand.”

Alisha’s gaze shifted back to Telaryn, who now stood alone, silhouetted by the fire. She looked taller in that moment. Or heavier. As if the shadows had finally found a spine to wear.

And for the first time, Alisha was not afraid _for_ Telaryn.  
She was afraid _of_ her.