"You shouldn't be breathing this air, not without a blade in your hand."
Savannah's voice cut through the thick silence like flint against steel. She stood at the edge of the narrow mountain pass behind the Callahan chapel, where mist slithered over the broken stones like fingers searching for the living. Her boots crunched against crushed bone and dry moss. Rhett was ahead of her, his jaw clenched, coat flaring with the wind that reeked of rot and silver.
"I told you not to follow me," he said without turning. His voice was hoarse. Tired. But not weak.
"You say that a lot," she answered, stepping into the fog anyway. "And I never listen."
He finally looked at her, eyes rimmed red, not from tears, but rage. "This isn't some symbolic stroll through ancestral memory. This is the Bone Path. It only opens to blood. Old blood."
