Kael’s POV
The storm hadn’t lessened—it had simply grown quieter, as if it were holding its breath.
Snow whispered across the stone, burying footprints almost as fast as we made them. The air tasted of iron and frost, and every sound—every creak of leather, every clink of metal—seemed too loud.
We had reached the western wall.
The chapel loomed ahead, half-buried against the fortress’s flank, its spire bent slightly where time and weather had broken it. No torches burned near it; only that single, flickering light in the upper tower—her lantern—cut through the dark.
Jarek crouched beside me behind a bank of snow. “No guards posted,” he murmured.
“There should be,” I said. “He’s either pulled them back to the main gate… or it’s a trap.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Neither,” I said, and
