"There's blood," she observed, voice tightening. She pressed her gloved fingers to the sap‑dark stain, feeling how the bark pulsed faintly beneath. "Not hours old. Days, at most."
Draven joined her. He inhaled once, discerning metallic tangs of iron and mana residue. "Elven blood," he judged. "Highborn. And laced with pressure‑sigil backlash—someone tried to heal themselves mid‑casting and failed."
She followed the narrow smear deeper, eyes narrowed. "If an elf survived out here alone, they must be desperate—or bound by oath."
"Or both," Draven said.
The trail wound past a crumbled amphitheatre whose tiered seats wore cloaks of moss. Cracked statues watched from the shadows—sentinels with blind, stone eyes. Sylara counted four distinct glyph matrices on the pillars, all dormant, all fractured. Each had once anchored complex defensive wards. She whistled low. "Someone breached a fortress to ruin this."
