Chapter 5: Blood at the Ashgate Pass

The pass announced itself the way bad terrain always did—not with a visible threat but with an absence. The wind, which had been cutting east off the volcanic highlands for three days, stopped.

Wren noticed it first because she had been using it to orient her position relative to the Ashgate ridge. She was on foot at the column's mid-section, her survey satchel open and the morning's distance notations half-complete, when the wind simply ceased and the ash-dust that had been drifting steadily from the left side of the road settled straight down onto her boots.

She looked up.