Just as Adrian was catching his breath after surviving the ordeal, he heard movement coming from the forest—Carl and Ellara had rushed over.

"Impressive," came a soft voice from behind him. "Most impressive."

Adrian spun around, nearly losing his balance as pain lanced through his injured side. Elarala stood at the edge of the clearing, her blind eyes somehow fixed on him with unnerving accuracy, her silver hair gleaming in the dappled sunlight.

"You saw?" Adrian asked, his voice rough with exhaustion and smoke.

"I felt," Elarala corrected, approaching with her usual graceful steps. "I felt the moment you stopped trying to control the flame and began to embody it." A rare smile touched her lips. "The transition few manage to make."

Adrian looked down at his hands, still tingling with residual energy. "It was different. Not like casting a spell at all. More like... becoming the spell itself."

Elarala nodded, her expression growing more serious as she approached the blackened pattern on the ground. "And none too soon. This creature..." She knelt, hovering her palm above the scorched earth without touching it. "This was no natural mutation."

"It fought with strategy," Adrian said, the realization still disturbing him. "It herded me, countered my movements. No beast should fight like that."

"No," Elarala agreed, rising to her feet. "It should not." She turned to face him, her blind eyes somehow more penetrating than any sighted gaze. "The flames you could not sense, the core you eventually found—these speak of manipulation. Of artifice."

Adrian felt a chill despite the lingering heat of battle. "Someone created this thing? Sent it after me?"

"Perhaps. Or perhaps you simply had the misfortune to cross its path." Elarala's voice carried a weight that suggested she believed the former rather than the latter. She stepped closer, placing a cool hand on his uninjured shoulder. "What matters is that you have crossed a threshold today. Your understanding of flame magic has transcended technique and entered the realm of intuition."

She withdrew her hand, her expression becoming unreadable once more. "Current circumstances being what they are, I believe we must accelerate your training." A pause, then, with surprising finality: "Or rather, I should say, you have outgrown what training I can offer."

Adrian stared at her, shock momentarily overriding his pain. "What? But I've barely scratched the surface of what you know—"

"Knowledge and wisdom are not the same," Elarala interrupted. "I can provide more of the former, certainly. But the latter?" She gestured to the dissipating remains of the lizard. "That, you have begun to discover on your own, in ways I cannot teach."

Before Adrian could argue further, the sound of approaching footsteps drew their attention. Carl emerged from the trees, his weathered face etched with concern. The old hunter had been recovering from his injuries for weeks, rarely venturing far from Elarala's valley. To see him here, moving with purpose despite the lingering stiffness in his gait, spoke volumes about his alarm.

"I saw the smoke," Carl said, his eyes widening as he took in Adrian's battered condition and the scorched clearing. "By all the saints, what happened here?"

Adrian opened his mouth to explain, but Carl had already moved past him, kneeling to examine the strange symbol burned into the earth. The old hunter's face paled, fingers hovering just above the blackened soil.

"This is wrong," he whispered, looking up at Adrian with genuine fear in his eyes. "Very wrong."

Adrian exchanged glances with Elarala before asking, "You recognize this pattern?"

Carl nodded grimly. "Not the specific design, but the method." He gestured to the perfect symmetry of the burned lines. "This isn't random scarring from a magical beast. This is a signature—a magical fingerprint left deliberately."

He stood, wincing slightly as his injured leg protested. "And it's not isolated. There have been reports from the nearest village—Forest Star, about half a day's journey northeast." His eyes met Adrian's, grave and troubled. "Strange occurrences. Livestock found burned from the inside out. Wells running hot, then dry. Children speaking of shadows that glow in the dark."

Adrian felt the Évermark on his chest grow warm, a sensation he had come to associate with impending danger—or important revelations. "You think whatever created this lizard is affecting the village too?"

"I think," Carl said carefully, "that whatever is happening has been building for some time, and we've been too focused on your training to notice." He looked pointedly at Elarala. "Too isolated in this valley."

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Elarala's expression remained impassive, but Adrian noticed a slight tension in her shoulders. "Perhaps," she conceded. "Or perhaps these events have accelerated precisely because of our presence here."

The implication hung heavy in the air. Adrian looked down at the symbol again, then at his own hands—hands that had, moments ago, channeled magic in ways he'd never before experienced.

Decision crystallized within him. "I need to go to Forest Star Village," he said firmly. "See what's happening there for myself."

Carl nodded approvingly. "I'll come with you. My leg's well enough for travel, and I know the area."

They both looked to Elarala, who stood silent for a long moment before speaking. "I cannot leave the valley," she said finally. "Not now. But..." She reached into a pouch at her belt and withdrew a small object, offering it to Adrian. "Take this."

In her palm rested a smooth stone, unremarkable save for a faint luminescence that seemed to pulse in rhythm with Adrian's heartbeat. "A seeing stone," she explained. "It will allow me to perceive what you perceive, should you activate it with a drop of your blood."

Adrian accepted the stone, feeling its subtle warmth against his skin. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," Elarala replied, her voice unusually somber. "What you find in Forest Star may well be connected to questions you've been asking since your resurrection—questions about the Évermark, about your purpose."

She turned away, facing the direction of her valley. "And answers," she added softly, "are not always the comfort we hope them to be."

As the three prepared to part ways—Elarala returning to her sanctuary, Adrian and Carl gathering supplies for their journey to Forest Star—none of them noticed the small, scorched animal tracks leading away from the battlefield, disappearing into the depths of the forest. Tracks that smoldered with internal heat, burning small, perfect circles into the earth with each step.

In the canopy above, a pair of eyes watched—neither animal nor human, glinting with metallic intensity before withdrawing into the shadows, patient and calculating.

The hunt had only just begun.

The journey to Forest Star Village should have taken half a day at most. Three hours later, Adrian and Carl found themselves still trudging through increasingly unfamiliar forest terrain, the afternoon sun filtering through a canopy that grew denser with each passing mile.

"This isn't right," Carl muttered, pausing to consult his weathered compass for the third time in as many minutes. The needle spun lazily, refusing to settle on any fixed direction. "I've traversed these woods for thirty years. The path to Forest Star has always been straightforward—northeast from the valley, following the Ridge Stream."

Adrian wiped sweat from his brow, wincing as the movement pulled at his bandaged shoulder. Elarala had applied healing salves before their departure, but the bizarre burns from the mutated lizard resisted magical treatment, leaving him with a dull, persistent ache.

"Could we have veered off course?" he asked, scanning the unfamiliar trees surrounding them. The forest had subtly transformed over the past hour—normal oaks and pines gradually giving way to twisted, gnarled specimens with bark that seemed almost metallic in the shifting light.

Carl shook his head, frustration evident in his weathered features. "Impossible. We've been following the stream." He gestured to the waterway bubbling alongside their path, then frowned, kneeling to examine it more closely. "Though..."

Adrian joined him at the stream's edge, immediately noticing what had caught the hunter's attention. The water, which had been clear when they'd started their journey, now carried a faint reddish tinge. Small wisps of steam rose from its surface despite the cool air.

Carl dipped a finger cautiously into the flow, then withdrew it with a sharp hiss. "Hot," he confirmed, his expression darkening. "Too hot for natural causes this far from any volcanic activity."

Adrian felt the Évermark on his chest warming in response to some unseen threat, a sensation he had learned to trust. "We're getting closer to whatever's affecting Forest Star," he said quietly.

Rising to his feet, Carl tucked the useless compass away and adjusted the crossbow strapped across his back. "Agreed. Though I'm beginning to think something doesn't want us finding a direct route."

As if in response to his words, a low mist began to creep along the forest floor, spiraling up from the increasingly heated stream. Within minutes, visibility dropped dramatically, the surrounding trees reduced to looming shadows in the thickening fog.

"Stay close," Adrian warned, drawing his sword. The blade gleamed faintly with residual magic from his earlier battle, responding to his heightened awareness. After his breakthrough against the lizard, he found himself perceiving magic differently—not just as an external force to be manipulated, but as currents flowing through everything around him, including this unnatural mist.

They pressed forward, guided more by instinct than sight. The fog seemed to thicken wherever they attempted to turn northeast, forcing them to choose less direct paths. An hour later, as the day's light began to fade, Adrian stopped abruptly, raising a hand to signal Carl.

"Listen," he whispered.

Through the muffling effect of the fog came a sound—faint at first, then increasingly distinct. Voices. Multiple speakers engaged in what seemed to be a ritual chant, the words unintelligible but the rhythm unmistakable.

Carl nocked an arrow in his crossbow with practiced silence. "Careful," he breathed. "Forest Star is known for its traditional harvest ceremonies, but this... this doesn't sound like any harvest blessing I've heard."

They advanced cautiously toward the sound, the mist parting occasionally to reveal glimpses of what lay ahead—a clearing illuminated by flickering lights that cast long, distorted shadows through the fog. As they drew nearer, the chanting grew louder, accompanied now by another sound: the terrified bleating of a goat.

At the edge of the clearing, Adrian and Carl crouched behind a fallen log, finally able to observe the scene before them. What they saw sent ice through Adrian's veins despite the unnatural heat permeating the area.

A dozen figures stood in a perfect circle around a central stone altar, their faces obscured by crude masks fashioned from bark and bone. Each held a torch that burned with the same anomalous flame Adrian had witnessed in the mutated lizard—fire that radiated heat and light but left no magical signature he could detect.

Upon the altar, a black goat struggled against its bonds, its eyes rolling in terror as one of the masked figures approache