Deep beneath the jagged, unnamed crags of the eastern Ashland, miles away from the roaring coastlines of Oakhaven where a massive fleet had weighed anchor the world did not know the warmth of a hearth fire or the comfort of a wolf's pack.Here, the air was a thick, stagnant soup of damp sulfur, wet stone, and the scent of ancient, undisturbed earth.A single, fractured shaft of pale twilight cut through a hairline fracture in the cavern’s vaulted ceiling, piercing the deep, suffocating darkness like a needle of ice. The light fell directly onto a flat, black obsidian stone slab in the center of the cave. Sitting cross-legged on the stone, her spine perfectly rigid, was a woman whose physical manifestation was a haunting riddle of nature.Her name was Lara.She possessed high, delicate cheekbones that looked as if they had been carved from the mountain itself, dark, sweeping hair that fell in tangled, unruly waves past her shoulders, and a striking, angular jawline that held an undenia
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