The first breath I took outside the cavern tasted like cold metal and drifting ash. The wind cut sharply across the ruined valley and carried the scent of burning stone, silver residue, and something older than either. My legs trembled from the climb out of the mountain, but the sight before me stole whatever strength remained. The valley floor no longer looked like a valley at all. It looked like a broken ribcage cracked open by something rising from within.
Silver fissures cut across the ground in jagged lines that pulsed with steady, unnatural rhythm. Each pulse lit the valley with ghostly light that moved like living veins stretching beneath thin skin. The glow illuminated the shattered remains of trees and old stone markers that had once marked forgotten boundaries. Everything lay tw
