Chapter 85: The March Without Banners
They left the Hollow before dawn.
No horns. No formation. No proclamation.
Just thirty-six riders and a silence that clung like ash. The fog behind them faded with each step, but none of them looked back. They didn’t speak of what had happened—not the battle, not the keeper, not the seal. Words felt small now. The kind of small that didn’t belong in the mouth of a survivor.
Leon rode at the front.
Elena was beside him.
The others followed in scattered order, weapons strapped close, eyes always moving. It was no longer a march of soldiers. They were something else now. Witnesses. Bearers of a truth few would believe.
The road east wound between cliffs that once held the banners of old kingdoms. Now the poles were empty. Splintered. The names they once carried had vanished in rot and weather. But even without cloth, the wind still whispered where they had once flown.
At midday, they paused beneath a broken tower. Just stone and ivy now, but it gave them shade enough for bread and water. Tomas sat near the edge, chewing slowly, still too young to know how to hide the tremble in his fingers. Leon passed him a heavier cloak without a word.
"Do you know where we’re going?" Elena asked.
Leon stared at the road. "We follow what stirs next."
She raised an eyebrow. "That’s not a direction."