Three days passed before Lyra left the Maren lands behind. She traveled light — a bedroll, dried meat, what remained of her armor, and a small leather journal filled with names and dates. The evidence she had promised to deliver to no one.\n\nThe village of Ashenmoor lay six days northeast, perched at the edge of the Ember Reaches where the great forests gave way to volcanic badlands. It was there, according to the surviving reports, that the Ember Crown had been taken — spirited away by agents unknown in the chaos following the heir's death.\n\nLyra had no orders to pursue it. No commission. No reward promised. The Maren had stripped her of everything including the pretense of official purpose. She rode for Ashenmoor because it was the only thread left to pull, and because leaving the question unanswered felt like leaving a wound untended.\n\nOn the second night, camped beneath a stand of blackthorn trees, she reviewed her notes by firelight. Eight names circled in red ink. Three of those names had appeared on documents she had pulled from a dead courier's saddlebag the morning of the ambush. Documents bearing the seal of a house that no longer existed in the official records — House Varen, dissolved forty years ago after a scandal that had been systematically erased from every archive she had consulted.\n\nThe fire crackled and spat. In the distance, a wolf howled, and Lyra listened to its voice like a navigator reading stars.