Voren's eyes widened as the video played. His attention was split between Esperanza squirming in one arm, her tiny fingers poking at his chin, and Bryan tugging at his sleeve with insistent little pulls, but the men on the screen were unmistakable.
The same faces he'd seen at the hotel with Alpha Jaron. The same cold, calculating eyes.
They stood in the outlands' woods, surrounded by skeletal trees stripped bare by autumn's cruelty. A carpet of dead leaves stretched beneath their boots, brown and brittle, crunching with every step.
One of them bent low, clearing the dry brush from the forest floor with quick, practiced sweeps of his hands. Their heads swiveled left, then right, scanning the shadows like thieves about to commit a crime.
Then the wizard began to speak.
The words were guttural, ancient, a language that seemed to claw at the air itself. The cleared ground cracked open with a sound like splitting stone, jagged fissures racing outward from the center.
