They returned to Bloodfang territory a little before nightfall, Halvard leaning heavily on Silvain for most of the final stretch, Wren walking close beside Marina with the particular wariness of someone who had spent her whole life being told the coalition was an enemy and had not yet fully learned how to stop bracing for betrayal that wasn't coming.

The boundary stones were waiting for them.

Marina felt it before she saw it, the hum rising sharp and sudden the moment they crossed into range, not the hollow, mimicked signal from the night before, but something real, something enormous, resonance building in the air around the stones with an intensity...