Chapter 49 Into The Vale Of Echoes

• The journey south took three days, though each mile felt longer than the last. The deeper they traveled, the more the land itself seemed to resist their presence. Trees grew gnarled and twisted, their branches knitting together overhead like skeletal hands. Streams ran dark, their waters metallic with an iron tang that burned the throat when smelled too closely.
• Lucia kept her pace steady at the head of their small company, her hand never far from the pendant of Altheon resting against her chest. Kelvin strode at her side, his gaze sweeping the terrain with the caution of a hunter in enemy territory. Behind them trailed Abby, Mirabelle, and Varian—their chosen circle for this mission, bound together by trust and necessity.
• No army marched with them. That had been the council’s greatest point of contention. But Kelvin and Lucia had insisted: stealth, not strength, would keep them alive. Too many warriors would only draw the enemy’s eye—and the Vale of Echoes was already a wound in the land that no army could mask.