The air in the narrow gap between the towering supply crates and the skeletal remains of a transport wagon tasted of old grease and impending frost. It was a stagnant, heavy sort of cold that seemed to settle in the lungs like silt. Ezek was right there beside him, half-shoving him into the crate, tense like he might explode any second. The knight's hand was clamped over Cherion's mouth, the fingers trembling with a rhythmic, frantic thrumming that matched the erratic pulse in Cherion's own throat.
Directly ahead, the Velkyn were... wrong.
That was the only word for it. They didn't move like predators, they moved like iron filings being jerked around by a magnet they couldn't quite find. Their obsidian shells clicked, a dry, skeletal sound, as they drifted in restless, uneven orbits. Cherion squinted through the smoke, eyes stinging, as he watched three of them drift toward a stack of crates like they'd just remembered something important there.
The hearth stones.
