By the time the companions left the forest behind, the afternoon sun was sinking towards the western hills. Dark trees gave way to rolling farmland, sheep grazing peacefully while farmers waved from passing wagons. After the goblin cave, it seemed almost impossible that the world could still be so calm.

Mara slowed her pace and smiled at the road ahead. “We’re nearly there,” she said.

Dave, who had asked this question roughly once every quarter of an hour for three days, stopped dead in the road. “We’re nearly there?”

“You’ll see Fallcrest in a moment.”

Dave turned to the others with the expression of someone who has finally been proved right about something very important. Nobody had the heart to tell him that being nearly there was not the same as having been right.

The road curved around a small hill, and then the town appeared.

The River Nentir swept around its southern edge, its broad waters busy with barges and fishing boats. Long wooden docks stretched into the current, where merchants shouted orders and sailors unloaded timber and grain. Beyond them rose the town itself, split in two by a great cliff of pale stone: Lowtown below, its busy streets winding between warehouses and homes built amongst the remains of older buildings, and Upper Fallcrest above, stone houses looking out over the valley from behind walls that had survived the orc invasion a century before. A broad staircase climbed the cliff face to link the two halves of the town, and rising from the heart of the upper town stood a tall stone tower with narrow windows and a pointed roof.

Dave stared up at it. “That’s Nimozaran’s tower,” he said. It was not quite a question.

“It is,” said Mara.

“I thought it would be bigger.”

“I thought it would have skulls,” said Nibbles.

“Probably books instead,” said Derek.

“Worse,” muttered Nibbles. “Nobody buys secondhand books.”

The guards at the northern gate, beneath banners snapping in the wind, recognised Mara at once. “Mara!” one of them called, hurrying forward. “We’d almost given up hope.”

“The goblins nearly got me,” she said, stepping aside so the companions could be seen properly. “These four found me before it was too late.”

The guard took off his helmet. “Then Fallcrest owes you all a debt.”

“We were happy to help,” said Thorn, who had been practising this line in his head for most of the afternoon and was pleased with how it came out.

“Owes us how much of a debt?” said Nibbles.

Derek put a hand on his shoulder. “Welcome to Fallcrest,” said the guard, a little uncertainly.

---

Inside the walls the town was louder than any of them had expected. Carts rattled over cobbles, blacksmiths hammered glowing iron, and children chased each other through the market square while the smell of fresh bread drifted from a bakery. Within moments Loki had found two friendly dogs and one butcher who decided that such a magnificent animal deserved half a sausage.

“Loki,” called Thorn.

The dog looked up. The sausage disappeared in a single bite.

Thorn sighed. “I suppose you’ve earned it.”

Mara led them through Lowtown, explaining that Fallcrest was the northernmost town in Almenor: the last proper town before the wild mountains took over. When Thorn asked about the ruins, she rested a hand on an old stone wall beside a newly built warehouse. “The orcs destroyed most of Lowtown a century ago,” she said. “My grandfather helped rebuild this street.”

Everywhere old stone met new timber. The town had simply carried on.

They climbed the broad staircase to Upper Fallcrest, which left Dave breathing heavily by the top. Dave was six foot seven. Climbing stairs, for Dave, was a lot of legs to organise. “Do people walk up here every day?”

“They do,” said Mara cheerfully. “They’re all showing off.”

From the clifftop the whole valley stretched out before them: the river curving south, dark forests beyond the farms. And far away, almost lost in the afternoon haze, Thorn noticed a great shelf of land rising above the horizon. It looked too straight, too flat, to be natural.

He frowned. “What’s that?”

Mara followed his gaze. “Oh. The old plateau. Nobody goes there much.”

“Why not?” asked Dave.

She shrugged. “There are easier places to visit.”

Something about that distant pale line caught at Thorn, though he could not have said why. He thought about it all the way to the Nentir Inn, which was warm and welcoming in a way the noisier taverns below were not. The innkeeper, Wisara, hurried round the counter to hug Mara, and when Mara told her what the companions had done, she pressed a small ring of keys into Thorn’s hand.

“Four rooms,” she said. “No charge.”

Dave blinked. “Actual rooms? With beds?”

“The softest in Fallcrest.”

Nibbles folded his arms. “I don’t trust free things. There’s always a catch.”

“Then don’t eat the free breakfast,” laughed Wisara.

Nibbles looked horrified. “There’s breakfast too?”

---

After washing off the dust of the road, the companions spent the afternoon exploring Fallcrest while Mara saw to her own business.

Thorn went to the blacksmith’s forge, drawn by the clang of hammer on steel. The smith was a broad-shouldered woman with soot-blackened arms and the smile of someone who liked a challenge.

“I’d like an axe,” said Thorn.

She raised an eyebrow. “I’ve got plenty.”

“I mean…” Thorn hesitated. He had one axe already, his first, from home. But a hero, he felt, should have more than one axe. A hero should have several, each with its own story. “I’d like my axe. The sort you keep for a lifetime.”

Understanding spread across her face. She disappeared into the workshop and came back with a stick of chalk, and by the time she had finished sketching on her slate board, a broad axe blade on one side, a long wicked spike on the other, head shapes and balance points and a handle wrapped in leather, Thorn was not holding a new axe. But he knew exactly what it would look like when it was finished, and he could hardly wait.

Nibbles’ afternoon began at a narrow apothecary’s shop near the docks, where he announced with great confidence that he would like to buy some poison. The sneaky sort. The apothecary did not even reach for a shelf.

“That isn’t something I keep in stock,” she said. “If you want the proper stuff, it has to be ordered through the halfling dock crews. A hundred gold, and you’d still be waiting.”

Nibbles had pictured something that fitted in a pocket, not something that needed an actual career in crime to pay for. “A hundred?” he said. “For a small bottle? What’s in it? Diamonds?”

“Poison.”

“Would you take sixty?”

“No.”

“Seventy and a brass button with an anchor on it?”

She showed him the door. He went to find Dave.

Together they discovered Naerumar’s Imports: a quiet shop, polished and full of glass cases far too expensive to touch. The owner, Orest Naerumar, was a tiefling with impeccable manners and horns polished to a respectable shine. Dave, ducking through the doorway, explained that he needed proper ink for copying spells into his spellbook. Orest produced a crystal bottle of shimmering blue ink, and the other bits a careful scribe might need, and Dave counted his coins twice, paid, and looked delighted.

This, Nibbles felt, had been far too easy. Nobody had haggled. Nobody had been beaten down on price. It was a waste of a perfectly good shop.

“We’ll take one of those as well,” he said, pointing at something in a case at random. “And that ring. And whatever you’ve got in the back that’s magical and not on display. And I’d like a bulk discount.”

Orest smiled politely and said he would be happy to discuss special orders in due course. Two very large men stepped through a door at the back. They were not quite armed, but they gave the strong impression of it. Dave became extremely interested in his ink.

“Perhaps another occasion,” said Orest, still smiling.

They left considerably more politely than they had come in. Outside, Nibbles opened his ledger and wrote Naerumar’s: overpriced, rude, large men under a heading he had labelled Do Not Shop.

---

Later, they met again near Wizard’s Gate and considered buying ponies from a paddock run by a cheerful halfling called Lannar Thistleton. The prices seemed fair and the animals were sturdy, and for a few minutes it looked as though the party might leave Fallcrest on horseback.

Then Loki caught the smell of horses, and took an immediate dislike to it. He barked. One pony shied. Another tried to bite Nibbles, though Nibbles insisted that was unrelated. Dave explained to Lannar that Loki was usually very friendly, which the ponies did not find reassuring, and Thorn hauled the dog back by the collar while they left as quickly as they could.

“We’ll walk,” said Thorn.

“We’ll walk,” agreed everyone.

Derek had spent his afternoon doing something none of the others had thought of: talking to people. Stallholders, guards, passers-by. About the road, about goblins, about Fallcrest itself. That was how he met Sergeant Murgaddin.

The old dwarf stood near the market square in battered armour, a dent above one eye of his helmet, his grey beard neatly braided, wearing the expression of someone who had seen every kind of trouble the world could offer and been unimpressed by most of it.

“So,” said Murgaddin, looking Derek up and down. “You’re one of the youngsters who pulled Mara out of a goblin cave.”

“With my friends,” said Derek.

“Good answer.” Murgaddin glanced across the square, where Nibbles was trying to look innocent beside a stall of shiny belt buckles. “Are they always like that?”

“Usually worse,” said Derek. He said it with the quiet weariness of a man who, at a hundred and twelve, had found himself unexpectedly in charge of three young adventurers and a dog, and was beginning to understand that he would be for some time.

Murgaddin’s moustache twitched. He walked Derek back to the others and introduced himself. “I keep order around here,” he said. “Or I try to.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” said Thorn.

“Trouble rarely cares what people want.” Murgaddin looked at Mara, who had rejoined them. “She says you can be trusted.”

“They can,” said Mara.

“That matters. Fallcrest remembers people who help.”

Nibbles brightened. “Does it remember them with money?”

“It remembers them with opportunities.”

Nibbles’ face fell. “That sounds like less money.”

Murgaddin gave him a long look. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“Thank you?”

“That was not a compliment.”

---

By evening the lamps of Fallcrest were being lit. The companions followed Mara back down the cliff steps into Lowtown, where the river air smelled of wet rope, woodsmoke and supper. The Blue Moon Alehouse stood near the docks, its timber beams leaning slightly, its windows glowing warm, and a painted sign of a cheerful blue moon grinning down at everyone who passed. Music and laughter spilled out of the door.

“This is where people come when they want to forget the day,” said Mara.

“Is the food good?” asked Dave.

“Very.”

“Then I also want to forget the day.”

Inside, the Blue Moon was crowded and friendly. Sailors drank beside merchants, dockworkers argued over dice by the hearth, and a musician played a lively tune. The innkeeper waved them to a table already laid with food: fresh bread, cheese, roast chicken, a thick vegetable stew and an apple pie.

Dave stared at the pie. “This,” he said reverently, “is more beautiful than magic.”

Derek sat down heavily. “I may agree with you.”

Mara served everyone before taking anything for herself, listened while Thorn described his new axe in loving detail, including the spike, twice, and smuggled sausages to Loki under the table. Thorn noticed. He said nothing. Nibbles was still complaining about the hundred gold when Derek pointed out that poison was expensive because people used it to poison people. Nibbles said that was exactly the point, and also unfair.

For a while nobody spoke of goblins or maps or danger. They ate until Dave declared he could not move another inch, then proved himself wrong when Mara offered him more pie. Dave saved the last and best slice of it, on a plate in front of him, for the very end of the evening. He had plans for that slice.

The shouting began outside.

At first it sounded like children playing in the square. Then one voice rose above the others. “It’s back!” And another: “The little statue! On the roof again!”

Derek looked up sharply.

Thorn reached across the table without looking at Nibbles. “Don’t steal it.”

“I wasn’t going to steal it.”

“Don’t climb on the roof either.”

Nibbles paused. “I wasn’t going to climb very high.”

But Derek was already on his feet, moving towards the door with the calm urgency of someone who had heard what mattered in those children’s voices.

Several children stood in the square pointing up. Derek shaded his eyes. At first he saw only chimneys and roof beams. Then something moved: a tiny grey shape crouched beside a chimney pot, no bigger than a cat, with thin limbs and a hunched back. For a moment it looked exactly like a carved gargoyle.

Then it turned its head.

Derek went very still. The creature had wings, stone-coloured and folded tight against its back, and its little eyes glinted. Derek took one careful step towards the wall. The creature saw him, snapped its wings open and launched itself from the rooftop, gliding out over the square and vanishing into the shadows between two taller buildings.

The Blue Moon roof — where something that was definitely not a statue took flight.

The children cheered. Derek did not. He went back inside and reported that whatever it was, it had most certainly not been a statue, because statues did not fly.

“Did it see you?” asked Thorn.

“Yes,” said Derek.

Mara’s smile faded. “That’s odd.”

---

Before anyone could say more, the tavern door opened and a halfling rushed in carrying a stack of papers, a leather satchel and several loose quills: cheerful, breathless and untidy all at once.

“Mara! You made it!” He hurried across the room, and Mara stood and hugged him.

“Only just.”

The halfling beamed round the table. “Then you must be the heroes. I’m Tobbs. Tobbs Quickfoot. Apprentice to the great Nimozaran, keeper of too many keys, fetcher of too many books, and currently very, very glad to meet you.”

He shook each of their hands in turn, then crouched to offer one to Loki. “And you must be the famous dog.”

Loki gave him a serious sniff, apparently decided he was acceptable, and allowed Tobbs to shake his paw.

“Excellent manners,” said Tobbs. “I wish more wizards were like you.”

Dave looked offended. “I’ve got manners.”

“You licked the jam spoon and put it back,” said Nibbles.

“That was earlier.”

Tobbs sat down, still smiling, still shuffling his papers for no obvious reason. But Thorn noticed something that all the cheerful chatter almost hid. The smile never quite reached Tobbs’ eyes, and every few moments he glanced at the window, like someone trying very hard to seem at ease, and almost managing it.

Mara put the worn leather satchel on the table. Tobbs stopped moving. For the first time since he had come in, he was completely still.

“Is that it?” he asked quietly.

“I kept it safe.”

“I know.” His voice softened. “Of course you did.”

She opened the satchel and drew out the old parchment. Tobbs unrolled it with enormous care, and the noise of the tavern seemed to fade away around them.

The map was older than any Thorn had ever seen, its edges cracked and dark. Thin lines marked roads that no longer existed and ruins drawn in faded ink. Strange symbols surrounded the outline of a lost city, and several points were marked in blue. Tobbs stared at them and whispered, “Oh.”

“That sounds bad,” said Dave.

“It’s not bad, exactly,” said Tobbs. He swallowed. “It’s important.”

“That’s usually worse,” said Nibbles.

Tobbs traced one finger gently over the centre of the map. The alehouse seemed to grow quieter, as though the room itself were listening.

“This is Ethium,” he said. “Not a town on the plateau: the whole plateau was the city. A vast ancient place, long abandoned, long looted. That faint pale shelf you might have seen from the cliffs, when the haze lifts. That’s it. Once it was the jewel of the old kingdoms. Roads ran to it from every direction, wizards studied there, merchants grew rich. Then the wars came, and for generations people believed there was nothing left but broken walls and stories.”

Thorn thought of the pale line on the horizon, and felt something cold go down his back.

Tobbs’ finger moved to one of the blue marks. “These show where the Ethium Stones lie: fragments of the old magic, buried when the city fell. For centuries they slept. My master has spent years gathering every scrap of lore about them, and lately…” He paused, and Thorn saw his hand tighten on the parchment. “Lately his work has stopped being theory. The stones are waking up. Lights in old ruins where no torches burn. People dreaming of places they’ve never seen. Halls of white stone, voices speaking languages nobody alive should know.”

Dave’s eyes were enormous. “That’s exciting.”

“No,” said Tobbs gently. “That’s worrying. If the stones are waking, someone else will have noticed too. Someone sent goblins after Mara for this map.”

“Someone sent goblins after me because of this,” said Mara, folding her arms.

“Yes,” said Tobbs. “I feared they might.”

“And the stones?” asked Derek. “What do they actually do?”

Tobbs reached into his satchel and brought out a small stone cupped in both hands, no bigger than a hen’s egg, smooth and pale grey, with faint blue veins running through it like frozen lightning. In the torchlight it looked disappointingly ordinary.

“How much is it worth?” asked Nibbles, before anyone could stop him.

“More than this tavern,” said Tobbs, “and less than what it can do. Nimozaran gave me this one. There are only a handful in all of Fallcrest, and most have slept since before our grandparents were born. But they’re waking now, and when they wake, they remember what they were made for.” He set the stone on the table. Everyone leaned in. Even Loki sniffed at it once and then sat down with his ears pricked. “The old texts are incomplete, but my master has pieced together a little of the language used to wake them. Watch.”

He rested two fingers lightly on the stone and spoke two words that Thorn had never heard before: clear, careful, almost reverent.

“Aethra Lumis.”

The change was immediate. A soft blue light bloomed inside the stone, steady and bright enough to read by, filling the space between their faces with a colour that belonged to no torch or candle. A gentle warmth spread out from it like standing close to a banked fire. The veins pulsed once, slowly, as though something deep inside had taken a breath.

“Aethra Lumis” — and for a moment the old magic remembered itself.

Dave made a small sound of wonder, and then, very quickly, pulled out his spellbook and wrote AETHRA LUMIS = LIGHT on the inside of the back cover, in his biggest letters. Nibbles’ eyes widened, and for once he did not say a number. Derek leaned closer, studying the light without touching it.

“It gives light,” said Tobbs, “and warmth. That’s the simplest use, the one even an apprentice can manage without setting his sleeves on fire. They can do more than that, in the right hands. At shrines. At pools. But first…” The cheerful mask slipped away entirely. “First we need to know what’s still out there.”

He let the light fade, and tapped the blue marks scattered across the map. “These are places where stones may still be hidden, or where they’ve begun to stir.” His finger moved to a darker symbol on the western edge, where the land rose in broken ridges. “And here: the ruined tower. Old Ethium stonework, still standing. If the stones are waking anywhere, a tower built to channel them is as likely a place as any.” He traced a line of blue ink climbing beside a river. “Follow the river road east, then the old track into the hills. There’s a waterfall where the only path onto the plateau climbs behind the falls. Treacherous, but it avoids the open slopes.”

He looked up at them, one after another. “Nimozaran needs stones brought back for study, before someone less careful gets there first. The road is long, the ruins are dangerous, and whoever sent goblins after Mara won’t stop because you won one fight in a cave. But will you go to Ethium? Will you search these places and bring back what stones you can find?”

The table fell quiet.

Thorn looked at the map, then at Mara, then at the dull little stone sitting amongst the crumbs. Every story he had ever read began with a moment like this. He had not expected it to arrive in a tavern, with jam on the table.

“We’ve only just got here,” he said.

“I know.”

“And people are already trying to kill us for that piece of parchment.”

“Yes.”

Thorn rubbed the back of his neck. It was not a refusal. Not quite. “We’ll need supplies. And a proper plan.”

Beside him, Dave was already nodding hard. “I want to see the stones. I want to learn how they work. I want to see the city.”

“Of course you do,” said Nibbles. “I want to know what Nimozaran pays.”

Tobbs managed a tired smile. “My master isn’t stingy with those who help him. A hundred gold for the first stone you bring back. Fifty for every one after that.”

Nibbles took out his ledger, wrote this down, and underlined it twice. “Why less for the second one?”

“Because the first one is the hardest to find.”

“The second one might be harder.”

“Then you can tell me so,” said Tobbs, “when you bring it.”

Derek folded his arms. “If the stones are waking, someone else will be hunting them too. Better we go with our eyes open than leave it to whoever sent those goblins.”

“Or worse,” said Mara quietly.

Tobbs looked at each of them, hope and worry fighting on his face. “Then you’ll consider it?”

“We’ll consider it,” said Thorn. “After we’ve—”

But Derek leaned forward. “What other kinds of things have been happening, exactly? You mentioned lights and dreams. What about little stone creatures on roofs?”

Tobbs blinked. “What?”

“A tiny stone thing,” said Derek. “On the roof outside. With wings. It flew away when it saw me.”

All the colour drained from Tobbs’ face. Mara saw it at once. “Tobbs?”

He stood so quickly his chair nearly toppled over. “That was no statue. That was a homunculus: a wizard’s servant. If it was watching this tavern, then someone knows the map is here.”

For one horrible moment, nobody moved.

---

Then the front doors slammed open so hard they bounced off the walls.

The music stopped. Four rough-looking men strode in, patched leather armour and hard faces, with a small iron hammer hanging on a cord around each neck. The biggest of them scanned the room until his eyes settled on the map.

“There it is,” he growled.

Tobbs began very quietly rolling up the parchment. “I’m afraid this table is already full,” he said, trying to sound cheerful.

The thug ignored him. “We’re taking the map.”

Thorn stood up. He had been waiting his whole life to say something like what he said next, and he said it beautifully. “Then you’ll have to go through us.”

The leader looked at him, then at Derek, then at Dave, who was holding a spoon, and Nibbles, who was holding his ledger, and Loki, who was holding a sausage. “All right,” he said, and reached for the parchment.

Thorn caught his wrist, and for one heartbeat the tavern was silent. Then the thug swung his free fist. Thorn ducked. The punch smashed through the edge of the table, and bowls, bread and Dave’s last slice of apple pie went flying across the room.

Dave watched it go. He watched it hit the floor. He watched a large dirty boot step on it.

“My pie,” said Dave, in a voice none of them had heard before.

That was enough.

The Blue Moon exploded into chaos. The gang leader charged Thorn with a roar, swinging a heavy club, and Thorn blocked it with the haft of his axe and drove the man backwards into another table. Chairs toppled. Tankards flew. Across the room another Hammer lunged at Tobbs, and Derek stepped into his path. The thug’s club crashed against Derek’s shield with a deafening clang, and Derek barely moved.

“You’ll have to hit harder than that,” he said mildly. “I’ve been head-butted by goats.”

Dave, backed into a corner, pointed one finger, very slowly, at the man who had trodden on his pie. A potato shot across the room and struck him squarely on the bridge of the nose. The man’s eyes crossed, and he sat down, and then toppled sideways into a pile of empty barrels. The whole tavern stared.

“That,” said Dave, “was for the pie.”

“You absolutely meant that!” shouted Thorn.

Nibbles had vanished. Then he reappeared behind another Hammer, jabbed him sharply in the backside, and swept his legs out from under him. “And that’s for the price of poison in this town,” he added, for no reason anybody could work out.

Loki spotted a gang member sneaking towards Tobbs and launched himself through the air with tremendous enthusiasm. Dog and thug collided. The map flew up out of Tobbs’ hands, turned over twice in the air, and came down safely into them again. Loki stood triumphantly on the man’s chest.

“Who’s a good dog?” shouted Dave, and half the tavern shouted back, “Loki!”

The other customers had seen enough. The Hammers had started this, which meant everyone else was free to finish it. A fisherman picked up a stool. A merchant threw a bread roll with surprising accuracy.

The gang’s leader saw the fight slipping away. “Forget everyone else! Get the map!”

For the first time Thorn saw real fear in Tobbs’ face: not for himself, but for the map. The leader charged. Thorn met him halfway, ducked under a wild swing, and drove his shoulder into the man’s chest, sending him stumbling backwards into the fireplace. His coat caught fire. He yelped. The serving girl calmly emptied a bucket of water over his head.

Nibbles couldn’t resist. “Looking a bit warm?”

Nobody laughed. Nibbles wrote it down anyway, to try again later on a better audience.

Another Hammer made a dash for the door. Dave fired another potato, which missed by a long way and sailed through the kitchen doorway. A crash echoed from beyond, followed by a voice shouting, “My soup!”

“I’m really sorry!” Dave called. Then, more quietly, to himself: “Now he knows how it feels.”

The remaining Hammers looked around. Their leader was soaked and steaming. One of their friends was pinned under a dog, another was asleep in the barrels, and the customers were advancing with stools and tankards. One of them lowered his club.

“I think we should leave,” he said.

Nobody argued. The Hammers fled, one of them slipping on mashed potato on the way out, and vanished into the streets of Lowtown.

---

Silence settled over the Blue Moon. Then somebody began clapping, and soon the whole tavern was cheering. “To the youngsters!” someone shouted. “To Loki!” called another. “To the potato wizard!”

Dave looked as if all his birthdays had come at once.

The innkeeper surveyed the damage: broken tables, broken chairs, ale and potato over everything. She folded her arms. “Could have been worse.”

“How?” asked Nibbles.

“The roof’s still on.”

A few minutes later Sergeant Murgaddin arrived with half a dozen guards. He stopped in the doorway, looked round at the wreckage, and then back at the companions. “I was only gone for an hour,” he said.

“It wasn’t entirely our fault,” said Derek.

Murgaddin sighed. He crouched beside one of the unconscious Hammers and lifted the small iron pendant from around his neck. “The Hammers,” he said. “They’re getting bolder.”

“They knew exactly what they were looking for,” said Tobbs, tucking the map back into Mara’s satchel.

Murgaddin nodded grimly. “They don’t work alone. The Hammers are one part of something bigger: one of four criminal guilds that have joined together down in Sunfall, the capital. The Gang of Four. Their reach creeps further north every year, and I’ve been trying to find their hideout near Fallcrest for months.” He looked at Thorn. “I think you might be exactly the people I need.”

“Is it paid?” asked Nibbles.

Murgaddin looked at him for a long, long time. “Yes,” he said.

Nibbles beamed. “Then we’re definitely the people you need.”

Tobbs waited until the guards had carried out the last groaning Hammer. The stone was safe in his satchel, and the map was safe with Mara. But his eyes kept coming back to the companions.

“You still mean to consider it?” he asked Thorn quietly. “Ethium won’t wait for us to finish arguing.”

Thorn looked at his friends. At Dave, picking a piece of pie crust off the floor and looking at it sadly. At Nibbles, adding up imaginary money. At Derek’s steady nod. At Loki, asleep with one paw on a sausage.

“We’ll talk properly in the morning,” said Thorn. “But yes. I think we’re going.”

Outside, the bells of Fallcrest rang the hour.

And far beyond the farms and forests and open plains, the forgotten ruins of Ethium waited in silence.