"No idea," Jeanette whispered back, eyes narrowing. "But it’s not random."
Then ca the most jarring part. Salviana paused—her hand trembled—and with a frown, she stepped back. Her chest heaved slightly, sweat now dotting her brow despite the chill in the air.
She lifted a darker piece of charcoal and drew a large X through one of the male figures.
Then... another X. This ti on a female.
The cancelled ones were rough, almost violent in execution. Unlike the delicate, deliberate strokes of the others, these were rushed. Harsh. Angry, even.
The rest of the figures remained untouched.
Six people. Two eliminated. Four remained.
The group tried to make sense of it.
"What is this?" Jeanette asked, voice tight with apprehension.
"I don’t know," Salviana murmured, stepping back, clearly shaken. Her hands were trembling, eyes darting from the markings to the lake and back.
"But we’re about to et two n and two won," she continued. "I don’t know who they are. Or... why those two are cancelled."
Alaric stepped closer to her, reaching out to gently touch her face. "Are you okay now?"
She looked up at him, startled at first by his nearness, but the warmth of his hand was grounding.
He blinked. "You’ve got charcoal all over your—"
Jeanette burst out laughing before he could finish, pointing at Salviana’s face. "She looks like a warpainted squirrel."
Alaric smirked. "Here, let —"
He reached out and tried to wipe it off, but only managed to smudge it worse. A broad streak of black now ran from her temple down to her cheek.
"Oh no," Salviana groaned, wiping at it uselessly.
Lucius, despite himself, let out a short laugh. "You two are ridiculous."
But the laughter died almost as quickly as it began, replaced by a heavy silence as everyone stared down at the mysterious markings once again.
The figures. The Xs. The unknown aning.
Salviana’s thoughts echoed loud in her own head.
Who are they? Why two? Why ?
She bit her lip, gripping the edge of the stone slab. The charcoal dust still clung to her fingers, like the future clinging to uncertainty.
Alaric, beside her, studied the drawings with narrowed eyes. He had seen symbols before—ons, divinations, premonitions. But this... this felt personal.
Jeanette stepped closer, staring hard. "Sothing tells ... the ones cancelled are already dood."
Lucius muttered, "Then we better find out who they are. And fast."
No one said it, but they all thought the sa thing.
Ti was running out.
And sothing—or soone—was coming.
The sun had barely begun to stretch its golden fingers across the fog-heavy sky when they left Linz’s inn, weary but more determined than ever.
Lucius rode ahead, posture stiff with worry and defiance, while Salviana leaned against Alaric as they shared his horse, the wind teasing strands of her hair loose from her braid. The air was cold but clear, the scent of sea salt riding the breeze as the morning tide rolled toward Wyfhaven’s harbour.
Behind them, Lindsay and her son Linz stood outside the inn, waving slowly as the group departed. The woman’s eyes were cautious, her son’s thoughtful—he was still digesting everything he’d heard the night before.
As their hooves clopped against the cobbled road and then softened on the dirt trail leading down from the cliffs, the city stirred awake around them.
Fishern hauled nets out of little sheds, seaweed still clinging to their boots. Won swept porches and vendors opened wooden stalls, their bright cloth awnings fluttering like flags in the breeze.
Lucius glanced around and muttered, "So peaceful. You’d never guess there’s sothing rotten beneath the surface."
"Rotten and foggy," Alaric said dryly.
They passed a few locals who greeted them kindly, so tipping their heads in respectful curiosity—clearly noting they were outsiders but not unwelco. Salviana smiled at an old woman who handed her a small pouch of dried sea rose petals.
"For luck," she said in a raspy voice. "You’ll need it."
"Thank you," Salviana whispered, tucking it into her cloak.
By the ti they reached the harbor proper, the entire seashore was alive with activity.
Boats bobbed in rhythm with the waves, so large enough for sea trade, others nothing more than little paddle skiffs used to fish in the shallows. Stalls lined the curved boardwalk, selling everything from carved driftwood charms to glass bottles that shimred like they held spirits inside.
Children chased each other barefoot between crates of fish, and the air was rich with the scent of brine, lemon, and roasted shellfish.
"This is where I’ve been seeing," Lucius said, eyes scanning the waterline. In his half-recovered mories, this harbor shimred with sothing beyond the natural — the glint of secrets, of sothing subrged just below the surface.
"If we know what we’re looking for," Salviana murmured, adjusting the hood of her linen because this place feel hotter than Wyfellon.
"It’s a mirror," Lucius said. He turned to Alaric, voice low and urgent. "A mirror that’s been looked into by a rmaid."
Alaric blinked. "Are you serious?"
Lucius didn’t answer right away. His gaze had gone distant, caught on the swells of the sea. "It was given to her by soone... no, taken from soone. She looked into it once, and it held her reflection. After that, it beca... different. It rembers magic. Just like Salviana does."
"Damn," Alaric muttered. "That’s poetic. Creepy. But poetic."
They split up — not to cover more ground, but to avoid drawing attention. Salviana stayed close to the tide-mark, where silver-scaled fish flopped in shallow crates and fishern sharpened their knives with tired grins. Lucius wandered toward the older dockhands, those with enough years behind their eyes to have seen strange things and known better than to speak of them.
Alaric, naturally, drifted toward the stalls with the most bizarre trinkets — just in case soone was trying to sell a cursed rmaid mirror for cheap.
"We’re looking for sothing... old," Salviana told a bent woman with sea-bleached hair, who was threading shells on a string. "Glass. A mirror. It’s said a sea-dweller once held it."
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