Ravenna Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Ravenna sat in the dark with the shard in her palm. It had gone cold. She rubbed it. She pressed it to her forehead. She whispered the names her mother taught her. Nothing woke inside the crystal. The vision was gone, and she had no way to call it back. One shard alone could show only a broken glimpse. She needed the other two. But she did not know where to look, and a dead crystal could not point the way. She stood and walked the ruin's edge, thinking. Her mother had spoken of more than one hiding place. If the court split the relic in three, they would not bury all three together. They would scatter them. She turned the idea over. The outpost was a start. Maybe it was not the only one nearby. Ravenna searched until dawn. She climbed over fallen columns. She traced the runes with her fingers, looking for a mark that matched the box. Near the outer wall, cold air brushed her ankle. She knelt. Between two slabs, a thin gap breathed like a mouth. She dug. Rubble slid loose under her hands. Stone by stone, she cleared a low opening veiled beneath the heap. Carved slabs framed it, marked with the same spirals as her box. A black hole waited past them. Her wings twitched. Something inside pulled at her, faint and steady, like a hum under her skin. Ravenna crawled through. The passage opened into a small chamber. Dust hung thick in the air. Her boot struck metal. She reached down and found a shape wrapped in rotted cloth. She peeled it back. It was not a shard. It was a carved figure, a wolf, black and cold, with eyes that caught what little light there was. When she lifted it, the hum grew loud. Warmth spread up her arm. The wolf's eyes brightened. And the dead shard in her belt pouch flared once, sharp and sudden, then dimmed again. Ravenna froze. The shard had answered. Not on its own, but to this. She pulled the crystal free and held it beside the wolf. The two pulsed together, faint but alive. The wolf did not show the road. It did something better. It stirred the shard from sleep. She understood then. The relic was not the only old thing her court left behind. There were tools. Keys. Objects that spoke to the shards. This one had answered the first. Maybe it could lead her toward the second. Ravenna wrapped the wolf and the shard together and climbed out into the gray morning. The crystal was no longer dead in her hands. But it still could not show the gate, and now she carried a new question. The wolf pulled north, toward something she could not yet name. She turned that way and started walking.