The Pale Before Dawn

The wind had teeth that night. It carved through the canyon's throat, flinging grit against your goggles, whipping the canvas of your tent hard enough to snap. You'd pitched camp on a ledge above the main dig site, a tactical decision born of too many seasons trusting flat ground. Below, Maren Voss's lanterns flickered like trapped stars.

You'd slipped away when Kael took first watch, claiming you needed to check the eastern ridge for flash-flood channels. A lie. Your boots found the old pilgrim's path without conscious thought, the same route you'd walked twenty years ago as a green-eyed kid with nothing to prove. The ruins of Qethar-Vel rose before you, their broken arches glowing faintly, like bone under blacklight.

Then you saw it.

A figure of pure luminescence, stepped out of the temple's shadowed heart. It had no face, no form you could name—just an ache of light that moved with impossible grace, trailing particles like dust from a moth's wing. It paused. Turned. And its gaze, though it had no eyes, found you in the dark.

Recognition.

Behind you, a footstep scraped stone. Kael's voice, low and rough: "You see it too."