Read Chapter 26: Ewan's Fate

The rain came down in sheets, muffling the sounds of the hunting party but doing nothing to hide the torchlight flickering between the trees. Callum pressed Ishbel deeper into the hollow of the fallen oak, his hand clamped over her mouth, both of them barely breathing. Her wound had soaked through the makeshift bandage, and the scent of blood hung thick in the damp air.

The villagers' voices carried on the wind—fragments of fury, names hurled like stones. *Keeper's get. Devil's blood. Burn it all.*

Callum counted the torch flames. Seven. Maybe eight. They were fanning out in a line, beating the undergrowth with sticks and pitchforks.

"We need to move," Ishbel whispered, her voice thin.

"If we move, they see us."

"Then we stay and bleed out?"

A voice cut through the rain, closer than the others. "Check the hollows. He knows the forest better than we do—he'll be hiding in the dark."

Callum recognized the voice. Hamish MacLeod, the blacksmith's son, who'd once been his friend. Who'd once clapped him on the back at the ceilidh and called him a good man.

The torchlight grew closer.

Callum's hand went to the hilt of the worthless dirk—the copy his father had left hidden. It was lighter than it should be, ill-balanced, a mockery of a weapon. But it was all he had.

Ishbel tensed beside him. "There," she breathed.

He followed her gaze. A gap in the oak's roots, barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through, half-hidden behind a curtain of moss. The earth around it looked disturbed—recently, as if something had crawled in and out.

"No," Callum said. "That's a dead end. If they trap us in—"

"Then we're trapped either way." She was already pulling herself toward it, wincing as her wounded shoulder scraped against the bark. "Callum, now."

The torchlight swung their direction. A shout went up. "Over here!"

Callum shoved Ishbel through the gap first, then threw himself after her, the roots scraping at his back as the opening narrowed. For a terrible moment he thought the passage would end in solid rock, that his shoulders would wedge and the torchlight would find them and the villagers would drag them out and—

The tunnel opened.

He tumbled onto damp earth, landing hard on his side. Ishbel was already on her knees, staring ahead. Callum pushed himself up and saw what she was looking at.

The cavern was small, no larger than a shepherd's bothy, but it was wrong. The air hummed with a stillness that had nothing to do with rain or wind. The space was filled with a soft, greenish glow that seemed to emanate from the roots that crisscrossed the ceiling like veins. And at the center of the cavern, seated against the far wall with his legs crossed beneath him, was Ewan MacRae.

He was alive.

But he wasn't right.

Ewan's eyes were open, but they stared at nothing, glassy and unfocused. His skin had the pale sheen of something that had been underwater too long. His hair, once the same copper as Ishbel's, had gone silver-white at the roots. He wore the same clothes he'd had when he vanished—Callum remembered the worn tweed jacket, the missing button at the collar—but they were pristine, as if only moments had passed since he'd put them on.

"Ewan," Ishbel breathed.

She rushed forward, dropping to her knees beside him. Ewan didn't move, didn't blink, but his lips parted.

"Don't touch him," Callum said.

Ishbel ignored him. She reached for her brother's face, and the moment her fingers grazed his cheek, Ewan inhaled sharply—a gasping, desperate sound, like a man surfacing from deep water. His eyes snapped into focus, wild and terrified, and he grabbed Ishbel's wrist with a strength that made her cry out.

"Ishbel." His voice was cracked, hoarse, as if he hadn't used it in years. "Ishbel, you have to stop. You have to stop her."

"Who?" Ishbel's voice wobbled. "Ewan, who? We've been looking for you for weeks. Everyone thought you were dead."

Ewan's gaze slid past her to Callum, and his expression twisted with something like recognition. "Callum MacRae. The keeper." He laughed—a hollow, broken sound. "You're still alive. I thought for sure the Ur would have taken you by now. It's been so long."

"How long?" Callum asked. The question felt foolish even as it left his mouth. The cavern held no clocks, no seasons, no dawns.

Ewan shook his head slowly. "I don't know. Time doesn't move here. It pools, like water in a basin. I've been..." He looked down at his hands, turning them over. "I've been counting. I think I reached twelve thousand. Maybe more."

Ishbel's face crumpled. "Ewan, we're getting you out of here."

"No." His grip on her wrist tightened. "No, you don't understand. I'm not trapped. I'm the anchor. That's what she made me."

"Who?" Callum stepped closer. "Who made you?"

Ewan's eyes met his, and there was something terrible in them—the look of a man who had seen too much and couldn't unsee it. "Morag."

The name hung in the damp air like a curse.

"Morag?" Ishbel shook her head. "Ewan, she's the one who's been helping us. She's the one who told us about the orbs, about the memories—"

"She's been lying to you." Ewan's voice broke. "She's been lying to everyone. She's not trying to stop the Ur. She's trying to become it."

Callum felt the words land like blows. "That's not—she's old. She's been the keeper's ally for generations. My father trusted her."

"Your father was a fool." Ewan's laugh was bitter. "No, not a fool. A desperate man. He went to Morag when the pact started to fail. He thought she could help. And she told him the only way to break the pact was to die on the tenth witness stone."

The tenth witness stone. The one from the orb. The one that had fallen with Alistair's body.

"His suicide," Callum said slowly. "You're saying she pushed him to it?"

"She fed him the idea like a sweetmeat." Ewan's hands were trembling now. "I watched it happen. I was there. She took me into the forest to show me the inner workings of the pact, she said. To teach me, to groom me. But she was just collecting me. A vessel in reserve, in case the Ur needed a new body before she was ready to take it herself."

Ishbel's face had gone pale. "Take it herself? The Ur—it doesn't have a physical form. It's bound to the stones, to the tree—"

"It's weakening," Ewan interrupted. "The memories you stole, the ones the Highlanders smashed at the village hall—every blow chips away at its connection to the world. It needs a vessel. A human body to anchor itself to the physical realm. And Morag is willing to offer herself."

Callum stared at him. "That makes no sense. Why would she want to become something that feeds on memories?"

"Because the Ur is old," Ewan said. "Older than the stones, older than the MacRaes. And Morag believes that if she merges with it, she'll inherit its knowledge. Its power. She'll become immortal, the keeper of all memories, the guardian of everything the forest has ever touched. She thinks she'll be a god."

"But she'll just be a monster," Ishbel whispered.

"Tell her that." Ewan's mouth twisted. "When you see her next, you tell her that. If you see her next."

Callum's mind raced. Morag had been there from the start—guiding him, testing him, sending him into the forest to retrieve witness stones. She'd known about the dirk in the wall. She'd known about the orb containing his father's memory. She'd orchestrated it all, feeding him just enough truth to keep him moving along the path she'd chosen.

And his father's suicide? The failed pact-breaking? Had Morag engineered that too? Had she watched Alistair MacRae bleed out on the witness stone and used his death to weaken the pact further, to drive the Ur closer to desperation?

"Ewan," Callum said, crouching down to meet the man's eyes. "Is my father's death the reason the Ur is escalating? Morag's doing?"

Ewan blinked slowly. "Alistair's death did something to the pact, yes. The blood on the tenth stone was a key turning in a lock. But it wasn't meant to break the pact—it was meant to break the keeper's line. To leave the Ur without a guardian, starving and desperate. And a starving thing will accept any offering."

The rain had stopped outside. Callum could no longer hear the villagers' shouts. Either they'd moved on or the cavern's strange stillness was swallowing the sound.

"What happened to you?" Ishbel asked softly. "After Morag led you into the forest?"

Ewan's eyes slid out of focus again. "She brought me to the Ur's domain. Told me to wait by the root—the great root, the one that holds the first keeper's bones. She said I was to be the witness. The testimony. A record that would survive the Ur's transformation."

His hand went to his own chest, pressing against his sternum. "But when the Ur came for me, it didn't want my body. It wanted my memories. It drank them like water, and then it hung me here—suspended, outside time—so that I would be a living record. A testament to what Morag had done. A trophy."

Ishbel was crying. Silent tears tracked down her cheeks.

"So you see," Ewan said, and his voice had a hollow quality now, as if he were speaking from a great distance. "Morag isn't going to help you break the pact. She's going to help the Ur devour you, and then she's going to take its place."

Callum's hand found the false dirk at his hip. "Where is she now?"

"I don't know." Ewan shook his head. "But if she's preparing to merge with the Ur, she'll need a final sacrifice. Something that belongs wholly to the keeper's line." His gaze sharpened, locking onto Callum's. "She'll need you at the first keeper's bones, beneath the root. She'll need your blood, Callum MacRae."

Ishbel looked at Callum, desperation in her eyes. "Then we don't go. We destroy the orbs and we run."

"Running won't stop her." Callum stood. "If Morag reaches the Ur first, she takes its power, and everyone in the glen is just another memory for her to eat."

Ewan reached out and grasped Callum's sleeve with a thin, trembling hand. "The tenth witness stone, Callum. The one your father died on. Morag needed his blood to prime it. But the stone remembers. It remembers the shape of the pact, the original terms. If you can get to it before she does—if you can speak the terms aloud with the true dirk in your hand—you can bind the Ur back to its roots permanently. No keeper, no vessel. Just the forest, sleeping as it should have all along."

Callum stared at him. "You know where the stone is?"

"It fell with your father's body," Ewan said. "In the Ur's domain. Beneath the great root, beside the first keeper's bones. The same place Morag will be waiting."

The same place. Of course it was.

Ishbel helped Ewan to his feet. He was unsteady, but he stood. "We can't leave you here," she said.

"You have to." Ewan's voice was firm now, almost sane. "I'm held here by the Ur's will. If you're not going to let Morag take its place, then it will reclaim me when it feels the disturbance. I'll slow it down."

"Ewan—"

"Listen to me." He grabbed her shoulders. "The cavern will stay hidden as long as you're not in it. Go. Get the dirk. Get the stone. Stop her."

Ishbel pulled her brother into a hard embrace. For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Ewan stepped back.

"Go," he repeated. "And Callum—don't trust anything Morag told you. Not one word. The Ur's memories, the ones you stole—_she_ is the one who taught it to hoard them that way. She's been grooming this forest for years."