The formation stood exactly where Marina remembered it, half swallowed by a slope of loose scree and old growth pine, a symmetry to its shape that had always struck her as faintly unnatural, three standing slabs of dark stone arranged in a curve too precise to be the work of weather or chance.

She had ridden past it dozens of times without ever once feeling what she felt now, standing at its base with Silvain close beside her and Ragnar a half step behind, the shadow magic under her skin waking into something between recognition and warning, a low hum answering, faintly, the hum she had felt beneath her palm...