Chapter 189: The swamp
The sun rose like an accusation—red, low, and angry behind a veil of fog. It didn’t feel like morning. It felt like a fever dream with the colors all wrong.
We broke camp with grim efficiency. No one joked. Even Leo stayed quiet.
The trees had gone from pine to skeletal. Twisted, leafless things with bark like burned skin. Wallace muttered something about "ghost roots" and how certain fungi could absorb memories from the dead.
He wasn’t wrong.
Felix moved with tension in every step. I watched him. He wasn’t just worried about the estate. He was afraid of it.
We reached the Dorne family grounds by mid-afternoon. No banners. No guards. Just a stone bridge crossing into a manor surrounded by sinking fields and blackwater. The estate sat like a corpse on a raft, surrounded by weeping willows and stagnant rot.
It should have been abandoned.
It wasn’t.
I felt the wards before I saw them—ancient, rotting, but still pulsing with old blood-bound magic. Felix froze at the edge of the bridge.
"...They weren’t this strong before," he whispered.
I rested a hand on his shoulder. "That means they’re scared too."