Ravenna Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Ravenna walked north for two days. The wolf figure guided her at first, its pull steady under her ribs. But the hills spread wide and empty, and the pull thinned. By the third morning she could barely feel it. She held the black figure up and turned in a slow circle. The hum came and went, weak as a dying pulse. Somewhere ahead lay the second shard. But the trail was fading, and soon she would lose it in the open land. She stopped beside a cold stream and thought. The wolf woke the shard when she brought them close. Maybe distance was the problem. Maybe the two needed to work as one. She pulled the crystal from her pouch and pressed it against the figure. The eyes brightened. The hum swelled and steadied. She took a step. The pull tugged clear and sharp, aimed at a ridge to the north. Ravenna grinned. Held together, the tools reached farther. She wrapped her fingers around both and climbed toward the ridge. The pull dragged her over broken stone and down into a narrow gorge. There, half-buried under a slab, something caught the light. She dug it free with numb hands. It was not a shard. It was an amulet, wide as her palm, set in an ancient bronze frame carved with runes. A green stone sat at its center, cracked through but whole. The hum in her hands roared loud. The crystal flared. The amulet's stone answered with the same green fire. Ravenna's breath caught. She knew this piece. Her mother had worn it. On the night she died, she pressed it into Ravenna's small hands and told her to keep it safe. Ravenna had lost it years ago in the burning of their home. Now it lay here, waiting, part of the very relic she hunted. She understood then. Her mother had not owned a trinket. She had carried the third shard all along, hidden in plain sight around her neck. She had known what it was. She had known what her daughter would become. Ravenna clutched the amulet to her chest. Two shards now. The wolf, the crystal, and this. She had crossed off one hunt without meaning to. But two shards still could not show the gate. Three were needed, and one remained lost somewhere in the world. She held the wolf and both stones together. The pull returned, faint but true, bending east this time, away from the ridge. The last shard lay far off, and the guidance was already weakening again. Ravenna wiped her eyes and stood. She had found her mother's gift. Now she had to find the last piece, before the trail died for good.