Kael Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Kael Thornwood crouched at the edge of a cold trail, brushing dirt from a faint print. Three times he had found her tracks. Twice he had lost them. Each time, he learned to read the ground a little better. That was the only skill that still mattered. He needed to follow any trail, no matter how old or buried. A boot scuffed the gravel behind him. Kael's hand drifted toward his knife, but he did not turn. "Don't," a low voice said. A folded paper dropped into the dirt beside his boot. Kael opened it. His own face stared back from a wanted poster, the ink still fresh. "He's sent a collector," the stranger said. "Half a day behind me. He knows you've gone quiet." Kael folded the paper and stood. The stranger was already moving off through the trees. Kael tucked the poster into his coat. The hunter was now the hunted. He turned back to the trail and started walking faster. A mile on, Kael spotted smoke through the pines. He crept to the ridge and looked down. A ranger station sat in the clearing, its metal roof catching the late sun. Shutters hung open. A stranger moved inside, sorting gear on the counter. Not a ranger. The collector had taken the post as his base. Kael memorized the layout, then backed away on soft feet. He could not stay on Valeria's trail with a hunter at his shoulder. He would have to read a new track now — the collector's — and stay one step ahead of the man sent to bury him. Halfway back to his own camp, Kael's boot struck metal. He bent and picked up a brass compass half-buried in moss. Its needle was bent, locked toward the ranger station behind him. The first stranger had left it for him to find. A silent marker. The collector was not coming — he was already here, and someone else was watching them both. Kael closed his fist around the compass. The trail he had to learn next was no longer in the dirt. It was in the men hunting him.