Celestia carried the goddess's last prophecy in her chest like a swallowed coal. One mortal would reshape the fate of Alaria, and she alone must find that mortal and speak the words aloud. But the goddess had given her no name, no face, no road. Celestia knelt on the cold temple floor and waited for a sign. None came. For three days, nothing came. She was the goddess's oracle, chosen young for her sight. White hair fell past her waist. Her painted eyes had read a hundred futures in smoke and water. Yet now she saw only her own reflection in the still basin, and the prophecy rotted inside her with no place to go. A tiny dragon hybrid dozed against her knee, pink fur and scales shining in the lamplight. It woke, stretched, and pawed at her sleeve. She had no answer for it either. Footsteps scraped at the temple door. An old man shuffled in, robe worn thin, sandals slapping stone. He squinted through thick glasses and leaned on the doorframe to catch his breath. Celestia knew him. Aldric Pensworth had copied sacred texts in this temple for forty years before his hands gave out. She had not spoken to him since he retired. He had never liked oracles. He said they trusted visions and ignored the written word. "You've been hiding in here," Aldric said. He set a cluster of blue roses on the altar, their petals bright against the gray stone. "These grow in only one garden. A sick girl's garden, three valleys east. The whole village says she dreamed of a goddess weeping." Celestia rose fast. "Dreams mean nothing. Half the province dreams of the goddess." "Not like this." He tapped his temple. "I copied the old prophecies, girl. The ones your order burned. Every chosen mortal was marked first by a true dream and a blue bloom out of season." He nudged the roses toward her. "These bloomed in winter. On her windowsill. I wrote it down because no one else would." The coal in Celestia's chest flared. She lifted a rose and turned it. The petals were real, cold, impossibly blue. For three days she had begged for a face. Now an old scribe she had dismissed laid a trail at her feet. "Why bring this to me?" she asked. "Because you can't read the signs without the records," Aldric said. "And I can't walk three valleys. We need each other. I hate that as much as you do." Celestia looked at the roses, then at the sleeping dragon, then at the door. She had her mortal. She had her direction. "Then we leave at dawn," she said. Aldric frowned. "There's one trouble. Word spreads. If I heard of the girl, others heard too. And not all of them want the prophecy spoken." Celestia tightened her grip on the stem until a thorn bit her palm. The search had a path now. It also had a race, and she did not know who else had already set out.

At dawn Celestia stood at the edge of the valleys and saw no road. Only ridges stacked behind ridges, gray and endless. The girl waited three valleys east, sick and marked by the goddess. On foot it would take six days. The prophecy burned in Celestia's chest. She did not have six days. The dragon kitten climbed her shoulder and hid in her hair. A man leaned against a crooked post near the trailhead, peeling an apple with a thin knife. His brown jacket was patched at the elbows. Mud caked his boots. He watched her painted eyes and white hair and grinned as if he already knew her price. "You're the oracle," he said. "Walking east. Everyone's walking east lately." He flipped the knife shut. "I'm Darius Vale. The border threw me out for moving goods through places maps forget. Those places go east. Faster than any road." Celestia kept her distance. "Others seek the girl too. Maybe you work for them." "Maybe I work for coin." He shrugged. "But those others took the river path this morning. Slow. I can beat them, if you make it worth my trouble." She had no coin to match smugglers. She reached into her satchel and drew out the goddess's feather, soft and shining with pale light. Darius stopped chewing. She pulled out a second thing too, a jagged shard of mirror she carried to read truth in faces. She held it up to his eyes. "The glass shows lies," she said. "Tell me again who you serve." Darius stared at his own reflection in the broken surface. The shard caught the light in sharp, clean angles. His grin faded. "Coin," he said quietly. "Only coin. I swear it." The mirror did not darken. She lowered it. "Then take me east," Celestia said. "I cannot pay in gold. I can pay in this." She held out the feather. "A sacred thing. It will fetch more than any purse." Darius weighed the feather in his palm. He looked at the valleys, then at her. "Come on, then. Keep up. The paths don't wait." He led her off the trail and into a seam between two ridges, a crack too narrow to call a road. The ground dropped and climbed. They crossed a dry streambed, slid down loose stone, and pushed through a gap she would never have found alone. By noon they had crossed the first valley. By dusk, the second lay behind them. Celestia's legs shook, but the girl was close now, one valley away. At the top of the last ridge, Darius crouched and went still. Below, torches moved along the far slope. Riders. Many of them, climbing toward the same village. "Your others," Darius whispered. "They didn't take the river after all. And they've got horses." Celestia looked down at the lights. She had bought speed. It had bought her a race she was now losing.