The birds were the first to notice. They always were, in places like this. They were creatures made of instinct and quick, nervous wisdom. One moment the air atop the abandoned watch post lay still and heavy, like a held breath: the next, a sudden rupture of wings tore through the quiet. A black explosion of feathers spiraled upward, crows launching themselves skyward in panicked and furious unison. Their bodies cut through the gloom like shards of moving night, their alarm a silent thunder that rippled across the clearing. Hex startled only after they did. Her heart, usually a soft and unbothered drumbeat somewhere deep within, kicked sharply, almost painfully against her ribs. Present. Immediate. Too loud for a place like this. What now?, she had wondered, though the Scar never bothered with answers. It preferred to brood in silence, to let its explanations linger in half-glimpses and lingering scents of old destruction. That seemed to be its way. Several hours later, Hex wandered alone. Sometimes it felt like time behaved strangely when she was left to her own thoughts and devices. The local Samhain festival at Hollowfen had yielded little for her curiosity: no sweets worth lingering for; no clever gossip; no peculiar artifacts tucked away in a stall. Even the mysterious dimensional bird - the only creature that had caught her interest - had vanished the moment she and Barracuda approached the glowing green cavern. One flap, or maybe one phase, and it was simply gone, as though dissolving into a reality only it belonged to. Afterward, she’d bid the stallion farewell with a tight-lipped tone, trying not to let her frustration show too plainly. She hated wasted time. Even more, she hated feeling as though she had expected something she should not have. Someone had to silently shoulder the blame, and Barracuda, poor thing, had been the nearest candidate. In retrospect, she supposed it wasn’t exactly fair… but fairness had never exactly been her guiding principle. Besides, who was genuinely frightened of funny-looking ravens anyway? She left Hollowfen behind with something unsettled in her chest. It tugged at her as she crossed the boundary into the Scar, a subtle but persistent pull, like the lingering echo of a dream she’d awakened from too early. Something here wanted her attention. Something here had meaning for her, and she was going to find out what it was one way or another. The deeper she pressed, the heavier the scent of old fire became. Ash clung to everything - to the hollow trees that had collapsed like brittle bones, to the tar pits where remnants of molten sap bubbled quietly, to the air itself, thick with the memory of burning. She breathed it in without complaint. Discomfort no longer troubled her. She had grown far too accustomed to it. She moved from ruin to ruin with measured steps. Fallen trunks lay like broken spines across the forest floor. Charcoal heaps smoldered faintly in the cold. Skeletal shapes, half-sunk in tar or fused by heat into grotesque silhouettes, lurked at the edge of sight. Their empty eye sockets followed her. She wondered, not for the first time nor without a strange sort of fondness, if the dead judged her for trespassing. It was as if the burnt bones knew something she didn’t. And perhaps that was true. She had never belonged here. Not entirely. Her shape was equine, but not naturally so; her shadows trailed her like extensions of thought; her horns - small as they were - gleamed faintly. Her mother had been something ancient and ruinous, a devourer of worlds. Her father had been a wanderer of realms, a drifter between realities. Neither had remained in this land long enough to teach her what any of that meant. Family ties were not strong with the ill-fated pair of dragon and wild horse, apparently. She was stitched from contradictions, raised by two beings whose love was as fleeting as their presence, if it had ever existed at all. And though she had grown up in this plane, knew its customs, understood its creatures, something about her still refused to align properly with it. Perhaps that was why the Scar called to her. Broken things recognized each other. Lost in these thoughts - thoughts of bloodlines, and abandonment, and the strange tapestry she had inherited - she almost bumbled headlong with a blaze of living fire. Heat washed over her in a sudden wave. The mare before her radiated molten brilliance, body lined with slides upon slides of liquid lava. Hex skidded back, her shadows rising instinctively in a defensive shroud, curling around her like smoke terrified of being burned away. “Watch it,” the lava mare snapped, ears flat against her skull and eyes shining like sparked kindling. Her voice carried the sharpness of cracking stone, firm and mirthless. She swept her fiery wings forward with a protective flare, stirring the ash into a swirling haze around them. Hex retreated a few nimble steps on lithe legs, her shadows following her in a loyal, rippling dance. When she felt a proper buffer between them, she peered out from her veil of darkness, a pair of voidsong eyes. Her voice emerged as a cold whisper, edged with faint distortion and entropy, but not unkind in its chill. “Apologiessss.” The hiss dragged behind her tongue unbidden. It sounded a threat, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “I’m sssorry.” Another newfangled, obligatory hiss. Another sharp flick of her ear. Her growing powers insisted on making themselves known in the most inconvenient ways. “I tend to forget to pay attention to where I’m going in here. The Sscar hass many ssecretss,” she added, as though the land itself were responsible for her clumsiness. The fire mare's expression softened slightly. Her tail flicked; her head lifted high with unshaken pride. “Don’t apologize,” she said, her tone warmer now: the warmth of a tavern hearth in midwinter. “I understand.” A brief pause. The fiery mare looked around uncertainly. “This place is weird.” Hex let her shadows thin, allowing her form to emerge. The off-black of her coat a cosmic darkness, but her mane, sun-bleached and messy, draped across the tiny horns that crowned her forehead. Without her cloak of shadow she looked unexpectedly young, almost small. Not at all an echo of the mysterious vibe she generally put forward. “Would you walk with me?” she asked, voice hopeful despite herself. “Perhapsss it is lessss ssstrange with two.” The lava mare - Falcon, as she would introduce herself - considered the offer. Then, with a soft metallic click of wing-hooks folding neatly, she nodded. “All right.” Together they walked, their silence comfortable, not strained. Shadow and fire were natural opposites, but there was a strange harmony between them all the same. Hex stole glances at Falcon’s wings, curiosity brightening her eyes. She wondered aloud what it might feel like to fly, remembering her father’s impossible tales; remembering even more vaguely that her mother had also possessed wings, though she’d shared nothing of them. The forest broke suddenly around a tower rising from the ruin like a solitary tooth of stone. Time should have eroded it, but instead it stood untouched, defiant. As they approached, yet another abrupt cacophony shattered the eerie quiet. A torrent of caws and shrill cries burst from the tower’s shadow. A flock of crows erupted upward in a frenzy of wings, their beady eyes flashing indignation at the intruders. Hex and Falcon recoiled simultaneously, stumbling toward the tower’s warped doorway beneath its crumbling awning. There, breathless and pressed close together, they exchanged glances. And then laughter, nervous and light. The Scar had played its trick. And for once, neither of them faced it alone.