The heat leaking from the lip of the ravine was suffocating.
Above their heads, the roots of the ancient gray trees were already catching fire, dripping burning sap and glowing embers down onto the crumbling shale.
John pressed his back flat against the dirt wall, his large frame shielding Martha and the convulsing Thomas from the falling debris.
Through the thick, roiling smoke, the heavy clank of armored boots echoed right at the edge of the drop.
“The trail ends here,” a harsh, commanding voice barked from above.
It wasn’t the Tier 2 Seeker from before; this voice carried a deep, resonant weight that made the stones in the ravine vibrate.
“The beast’s scent-tracking was scrambled by that sudden burst of localized earth magic.” “Magistrate, could the child be an Earth bloodline mutant?” another soldier asked, his voice laced with confusion.
“Fool,” the commander snapped, and John’s blood turned to ice.
It was Grand Magistrate Vane himself, or at least a highly potent projection of his flame consciousness.
“The House of Earth hasn’t had an unrecorded lineage breakthrough in three centuries.
Whatever did this didn’t cast earth magic—it stole it, compressed it, and spit it back out.
Look at the ash.
The ambient mana here is completely dead.
It has been erased.” Beneath the root overhang, Thomas let out a soft, ragged wheeze.
Martha instantly pressed her hand over the young boy’s mouth, tears blurring her vision as she looked at his pale, sweating face.
The silver vortex inside his chest was spinning erratically now, completely empty of the stolen earth-mana but damaged by the sudden, violent discharge.
Tiny silver fractures were beginning to appear along the skin over his ribs, glowing faintly through his tattered shirt.
A pair of heavy, flame-wreathed boots stepped directly onto the thick root right above their heads.
Dirt and pebbles showered down onto John’s shoulders.
“Burn the ravine,” Vane ordered coldly.
“If we cannot locate the physical body, we will leave nothing but slag.
Ignite the lower trenches.” “Sir, the Wildlands border sects might register the thermal flare—” “Let them,” Vane countered.
“The eradication of an unaligned anomaly takes precedence over border treaties.
Incinerate it all.” High above, a brilliant, terrifying crimson light began to gather.
The air inside the ravine grew so hot that the dry leaves covering the family began to smoke spontaneously.
John clenched his fists, preparing to push Martha and Thomas deeper into the narrow crevice of the stone, fully intending to let his own body take the brunt of the magical firestorm.
Then, a strange, low whistle cut through the roaring heat of the forest.
It wasn’t a human voice, nor was it the cry of a magical beast.
It was the sound of a heavy, ancient iron blade cutting through the air.
Thwack.
A sudden, concussive blast of wind—pure, colorless, and devastatingly sharp—roared through the top of the ravine.
The gathering fire-mana in the sky was violently torn apart, dissipated into harmless red sparks by a massive gale.
“Who goes there?” Vane’s voice boomed, turning from cold arrogance to sudden, sharp alarm.
From the deeper, unburned shadows of the ravine floor, a towering silhouette materialized through the smoke.
The figure wore a tattered, oil-stained cloak made of heavy raven feathers that seemed to absorb the ambient light of the fire.
In his right hand, he dragged a massive, notch-bladed iron executioner’s sword that left a deep groove in the shale.
“The House of Embers always did have a terrible habit of playing with matches in another man’s yard,” the stranger drawled, his voice deep, gravelly, and entirely unimpressed by the presence of a High Magistrate.
He didn’t look toward the hidden family, but as he raised his massive iron sword, the wind around the ravine began to howl, forming a protective, swirling barrier of localized air currents that instantly dropped the temperature around Thomas’s burning body.
The trackers had found them, but the Wildlands had just introduced its own predator.