The blood was horribly fresh, dripping from the bell and marking out a path in the snow, one she didn’t want to follow.

But they needed to do this, they needed to find what Dad had sent them for, and there was no getting around it.

Alizee didn’t bother to check on Corentin as she ducked under the fiery banners. An incredible eyesore upon the mountain, since it wasn’t Kindran territory whatsoever. And that was strange, because the Kindra were the biggest allies of the Cerulle.

“This won’t stay as the Silver Pass much longer, will it?” Corentin asked, sounding just slightly less calm than he would probably like Alizee to believe. She humoured him, shrugging and continuing along the path.

“We’ll call it something so awful sounding it will scare people, and we’ll all be safe!”

“It’ll never work.”

“Oh, Cora, it’s not meant to ‘work’,” she sighed, not turning around. They had to be close, surely…

She could smell iron, and that could mean nothing good. Thera were a possibility, but it was more than likely, horribly certain, that the scent in the air was blood.

Thick and red and entirely too colourful for the grey mountains. Drips all across the snow, large splatters upon the grey stone, smeared handprints staining the wooden frames that held those sacred bells.

“Stop a minute,” she called, dodging around one of the bells. “I want to try something.”

There was blood on this bell as well. If Alizee thought enough about it, she would come to the conclusion that someone — or more than a someone — was killed using them. She didn’t doubt that they were heavy enough to crush a person, but what other ways could they be used?

No, she reached out to trace one of the clouds marked into the wood, and as her fingertip brushed the carving, it began to glow.