Dawn bled slow across the plains, the kind of light that didn’t rise so much as unfold—gold first, then white, washing the grass in a shimmer that seemed to stretch forever. The camp sat quiet in its hollow, the fire reduced to a few faint embers and the smell of smoke and oat dust.

  Toby was first awake. He pushed the tent flap aside and blinked against the brightness. The heat was already coming on, soft but steady, and the air was thick with the hum of insects. The horses had wandered as far as their lines allowed, heads down in the waist-high reeds that rippled like wheat. They tore at it with the easy rhythm of content beasts—tails flicking, ears twitching, utterly at peace.

  He smiled faintly. “You’d think we’d found paradise.”

  Maxwell’s voice came from the shadows behind him. “They have. Free food, no armor, no maps. We may find wild horses out here.”

  The old knight stepped into the light, his dark hair slicked back with water from a skin, beard neat despite the road. He moved like a man who never really slept—just paused long enough to make others think he did. “Get the pot going,” he said. “We eat, we ride.”

  Toby crouched by the fire pit and coaxed the embers alive with dry grass. Reece emerged next, eyes half open, his blond hair a tangle. “Tell me that smell’s not porridge again.”

  “It’s not,” Zak said, dragging his bedroll together. “It’s despair pretending to be breakfast.”

  Maxwell stirred the pot with the blunt end of a spoon. “Despair’s high in iron. Builds character.”

  Reece groaned, but he took his bowl all the same. “If we make it home, I’m buying a farm and never eating oats again.”

  Toby grinned over his cup. “You’d have to grow them first.”

  “I’ll burn them before I eat them,” Reece muttered.

  Zak stretched, groaning like a creaky door. “And I’ll build that saint of shade I keep threatening. Only one who ever listens.”

  They ate standing, watching the horses. Oak, Toby’s bay gelding, was up to his knees in golden reed-grass, muzzle buried, tail swishing in lazy rhythm. His coat gleamed reddish-brown where the light hit it. Daisy, Reece’s dun mare, stood near him—ears half-lidded, patient, chewing with long-suffering calm. Zak’s gray, Flint, looked carved from stubborn rock, head down, biting slow and deliberate as if he were judging every stalk. And then there was Maxwell’s mount—Piper—a massive black destrier, tall as a door and broad enough to blot half the sun when he shifted. He ate in steady mouthfuls, quiet and precise, like a soldier eating rations at inspection.

  Zak nodded toward Piper. “That thing eats like he’s planning a siege.”

  Maxwell gave a faint grunt. “He’s a professional.”

  “What about the name, though?” Reece said, smirking. “Piper? Really? Sounds like he should be carrying a tune, not trampling armies.”

  Maxwell checked a strap on his saddle. “He keeps time. That’s all the name needs to mean.”

  “Daisy keeps peace,” Reece said, patting his mare’s neck. “Though she’s smarter than half the company.”

  “Flint keeps secrets,” Zak said proudly, “like how to stop moving once he starts.”

  “More like he keeps grudges,” Toby said. “He nearly bit me last week.”

  “Only once,” Zak said cheerfully. “He respects boundaries.”

  Maxwell didn’t look up. “And Oak?”

  Toby hesitated, brushing the horse’s neck. “He was already named when I got him. He’s solid. Knows when to dig in.”

  “Then he suits you,” Maxwell said simply.

  They finished the meal, packed their things in the practiced rhythm of men who had done this too often to need words. Reece rolled the tent with neat hands; Zak stamped out the last ember; Toby filled the skins from the half-buried water bag and slung them over Oak’s saddle. When they were done, the only trace of camp was a circle of pressed grass and the faint smell of smoke.

  “Check girths,” Maxwell said. “We’ll follow the wind’s line until midday. South and a little west.”

  Piper moved under him with the heavy grace of something that understood its own strength. The others mounted, leather creaking, hooves rustling through dry reeds. Oak snorted once, impatient to move. Daisy fell in line beside him, calm and steady. Flint lagged until Zak clicked his tongue, then surged forward like a stone deciding to roll.

  The wind picked up, brushing warm against their faces. The sea of reed-grass rippled around them, whispering over their boots and the horses’ knees. The sun climbed fast, bright enough to turn the edges of their armor to mirrors.

  Reece glanced over. “You think it’s true what people say—that every horse takes after its rider?”

  “Then yours would sleep standing,” Zak said.

  Reece grinned. “And yours would eat the roof off a tavern.”

  “Better than whining about the oats,” Zak shot back.

  Maxwell said nothing, but Toby saw the ghost of a smile in his beard as Piper’s stride lengthened. The destrier’s shadow swallowed them all for a moment before sliding away again into the glare.

  The road was gone, but the world stretched wide and golden. Only the wind gently fought them, but their horses were happy beneath them, it almost felt enough.

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  By midday, the sun had settled into its full weight—a white coin burning straight overhead, flattening every shadow. The wind, which had been their only companion through the long morning ride, had quieted to a shimmer. Even the horses slowed, their coats darkened with sweat, their breaths coming deep and rhythmic.

  Zak shaded his eyes. “There,” he said, pointing ahead.

  Something broke the horizon—a shape too clean to be a hill, too bright to be earth. At first it looked like a mirage, a shimmer caught in the glare. But as they drew closer, the outline hardened—tall, pale, and curved like a fang thrust from the soil.

  “Not a stone,” Reece murmured, squinting. “A monument, maybe?”

  “Not one built by men,” Maxwell said.

  They rode until the thing filled their sight: a single column of bone-colored rock, rising high from the plains. It caught the sun like polished ivory, each ridge shadowed in gold. Unlike the pear-shaped glacial stones that marked Highmarsh’s fields, this one was sharper—a canine tooth jammed point-first into the sky.

  When they finally reached its base, even the air felt cooler, the shade thick enough to breathe. The horses all slowed of their own accord. Piper blew a slow exhale, tossing his black mane, while Oak dipped his head and began cropping at the dry grass near the stone’s edge.

  “It’s twice as tall as the keep—maybe higher,” Zak said, craning his neck. “If it fell, it’d crack the plain in half.”

  “Then best hope it doesn’t,” Maxwell said.

  They dismounted and led the horses into the shadow, the sudden relief like stepping underwater. The rock radiated a faint coolness that crept up through their boots. For the first time since morning, the group relaxed. Reece slumped against his saddlebag, eyes closed. Zak poured a little water into his hands and rubbed it over his face. Toby just stared upward, watching the light spill along the stone’s edges, and wondered how something so massive could look both ancient and newly made.

  He turned to Maxwell. “You think anyone at Highmarsh could cut this?”

  Maxwell let out a short breath, almost a laugh. “With a pick and a century, maybe. Even with a forged blade, it’d be like carving wind. You’d blunt steel before you broke skin.”

  “What about—” Toby hesitated, “—the king’s blade? Solriz?”

  At that, Maxwell actually looked at him. The old knight’s eyes held that sharp glint Toby had come to recognize—the kind that meant the question had landed somewhere close to the truth. “Even Solriz would chip before it split this clean,” he said. “Stone like this remembers the pressure of the earth. Men forget too quickly to match it.”

  Toby frowned, running a hand along the warm surface. “Then why can we cut at all?”

  “Most can’t,” Maxwell said, watching him carefully. “A knight might strike a stone with every ounce of his training and leave a mark no deeper than an inch. The Art is will, not strength—and most men’s will cracks before rock does.”

  Toby met his gaze. “And mine doesn’t?”

  Maxwell didn’t answer right away. He only studied him—the same way he sometimes studied the stars before deciding direction. Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth turned upward. “You’re learning to listen,” he said. “That’s the first thing the stone respects.”

  Toby tilted his head, unsure whether that meant praise or warning. “So that makes me special, then?”

  “It makes you young,” Maxwell said. Then, after a beat, “But perhaps a touch dangerous.”

  Toby tried to grin, but the weight of the knight’s tone anchored it halfway. “Does that mean I’m also the angriest?”

  That earned a real laugh—a deep, chest-warmed sound that bounced off the stone. Piper flicked an ear at it, unimpressed.

  “Anger has its place,” Maxwell said once the mirth had faded. “You’ve reason enough for it. But will shaped only by pain will burn itself hollow. Control it—don’t strangle it. That’s what Sire Ray meant when he spoke of sacrifice.”

  The air shifted at that name. Reece opened one eye. Zak leaned forward from where he sat cross-legged, sweat still glistening in his hair.

  “What kind of sacrifice?” Toby asked.

  Maxwell’s expression cooled, the laughter gone. “The kind that leaves you with the strength to strike and the wisdom not to. You’ll understand when you have to choose between the two.”

  Zak broke the silence, stretching with an exaggerated groan. “Guess that explains me, then. No anger, no wisdom, no strength—must be why I’m still alive. Life’s too easy.”

  Toby gave him a sidelong grin. “Careful. Reece said something like that yesterday before we crossed the border.”

  Reece sighed. “And look where that got us. Double jinxed now.”

  “Triple,” Zak said. “I’ll court death itself just to keep things interesting.”

  “Try courting hygiene first,” Reece muttered.

  Maxwell waved a hand, the faintest smirk lingering on his lips. “If Death wants him, she can have him. He talks too much for the living.”

  Zak put a hand to his chest, mock-wounded. “You wound me, Ser.”

  “Not yet,” Maxwell said, already turning toward the stone.

  Toby watched as the knight began unfastening his gauntlets and flexing his hands, stretching out his shoulders. “You’re not…”

  “I am,” Maxwell said simply. “You don’t pass a monument like this and not learn something from it. I want to see what it sees.”

  “You’re going to climb it?” Reece asked incredulously.

  Maxwell glanced up at the towering fang, its tip lost in sunlight. “You rest in the shade. Let the horses eat. I’ll be back before the wind changes.”

  Piper stomped once, as if in disapproval, and Maxwell patted the destrier’s flank. “Guard them, old friend. I’m trusting you to the grass.”

  The knight took his boots off then began his ascent without ceremony—palms flat, weight centered, the same fluid economy that Toby had seen a hundred times in drills. But this was different. The rock wasn’t just a surface; it seemed to receive him, to acknowledge the balance of his movements.

  Toby felt the heat of the day pressing down and looked back toward the endless horizon, the reeds still waving lazily under the sun. For the first time since they’d entered the wild, he wondered if the land itself was watching—and what it thought of men trying to master it.

  “Set up camp,” Maxwell called down, his voice already small against the height. “If I fall, don’t waste water on me.”

  Zak shaded his eyes, grinning. “That’s comforting.”

  “Comfort’s for feasts,” Reece said automatically, and Toby smiled despite the heat.

  The old knight climbed higher, his shadow shrinking against the fang of stone. The light flared bright against the surface, and the sound of the plains fell away until there was only the scrape of skin on stone and the wind’s breath whispering around the rock.

  By the time they’d laid their gear in the shade and loosed the horses, Maxwell was a dark mark halfway up the sky.

  “Every time he says ‘rest,’” Zak muttered, “it means he’s going to make us feel lazy.”

  Toby shielded his eyes, watching that lone figure moving toward the sun. “He doesn’t rest,” he said quietly. “He just changes what kind of work he’s doing.”

  Reece nodded. “Then we’d better get started.”

  They began unpacking the canvas, the shadows stretching long across the ground. Above them, the knight’s voice came down faintly through the wind—clear, sure, and steady:

  “You’ll want to see this!”