Kingdom of Claw

Seventeen years before the story begins, King Ivar Ironheart conquers Íseldur and blood-eagles King Kjartan in the pits of Askaborg.

Seventeen years before the story begins, King Ivar Ironheart conquers Íseldur and blood-eagles King Kjartan in the pits of Askaborg. Restless about his dynasty, Ivar forces a Weaver—a Galdra woman who reads fate's threads—to complete a tapestry of his future. What emerges is a portrait of his death: piles of corpses, blood-drenched pillars, and a fallen king. When the Weaver refuses to elaborate, Ivar threatens to dismember her child. She breaks: he will meet his end by galdur's hand. Ivar orders the child killed and rounds up every magic-wielder in his new kingdom. The genocide of the Galdra begins—not born from hatred of magic, but from one king's desperate flight from his own woven fate.

Rey identifies Silla as the princess thought dead seventeen years

Rey has been piecing together clues for days—the spinning game Silla played while drunk in the canyon, the crescent scar beside her eye, the sheltered life she's led—and the evidence points to an impossible conclusion. When Silla tries to flee on his horse during a stop at a village, Rey catches her and names her: Eisa Volsik, the princess everyone believes was executed seventeen years ago. He was the boy who watched her fall from a fountain and receive that scar. Silla begs to leave Íseldur, to vanish on a southbound ship, but Rey refuses—he insists Kalasgarde is the only safe option. She calls him no different from Jonas, stripping away her choices. Their alliance fractures into a bitter, silent ride north.

Birch etchings link Rey to the kingdom's most feared killer

Arriving at Istré's gates after dark, Silla rips a birch bark etching from the wall. Rey's face stares back at her, labeled Slátrari—the kingdom's most feared killer—with a ten-thousand-sólas bounty. Hers is beneath it, worth double. The truth crashes over her: those burned corpses along the Road of Bones were his work. Before she can process this, eighteen Wolf Feeder archers surround them. Silla uses her uncontrolled light to blind the archers while Rey's smoke tunnels down their throats, searing them from within. They flee on horseback through dark woods, arrows singing past their ears, until Rey ignites a bridge to cut off pursuit. Istré is lost to them. Now the entire kingdom hunts them both.

Saga poisons a scribe to steal the queen's wax sealer In Askaborg, Saga doses Lady Geira's bone figurines with luna root powder during a polite visit, triggering horrific blisters wherever the woman's bare skin makes contact. While Geira screams for relief, Saga lifts her necklace of keys and searches her study—finding a salacious handwriting sample but no…