The snows came earlier in Ardor than south of the Mistwind Mountains. Keening winds drifted the white veils of winter across the moors, driving the herds of malorni to seek their wintering grounds along the southern reaches of Hadras Gate. The Ardorian horses always knew when to leave, a week before the snows arrived. But one of the malorni stood amid the rising drifts of snow, waiting patiently for his mistress to return. The dark stallion lifted his head to the winds, hearing the mournful call of a wolf.
If I’d known my path would lead me here, would I have come?
The question repeated itself like a chant inside Kerael’s mind as she walked away from Huntsdark, towards the heaping ruins of an ancient manor. The trees were like twisted skeletons, bleached white by the sun, covered in the creeping fingers of withered vines. The dark warrior paused where the door once stood, hesitant at the edge of memory.

A child chased a tawny wolfhound round and round the entrance hall, until her father called her to cease, and so both girl and dog collapsed in a merry breathless heap on the cool stonework. Her bright blue eyes smiled at the dog, who lapped at her face with a sloppy tongue. Brighter days. Vanished in a night of fire and terror.
“Adurna, take Kerael! Don’t let them find her!” Takav, wearing his armor and with a shield resting on his arm, drew the ancient sword from its scabbard, the emblem of the Sirru line engraved on its blade. “Go, now!”
That emblem. Kerael shook herself back to the present, realizing that she now stood before one of the cracked pillars of the entrance hall. One black gloved hand traced the symbol, of an eye encircled with three rings. The symbol that represented all she had lost, and all she had come to hate.

“On that night you discovered the truth behind your family. The truth your father fought to keep from you, until it cost him his very life. You punish yourself, for a bloodline you have forsaken, Kerael Sirru.”
The amethyst eyes of the dragon Guardian, the last of his line to guard the ruins of Ashtalon, floated before Kerael’s memory. It was he who had trained her, forced her to relive the moments she had hidden for so long.
“That name holds only pain and betrayal for me. I am Kerael Darshievo. I choose a new path.”
“’The seeker in shadow’, that is the name you choose for yourself?”
“That name chose me.”

Kerael drew her hand away from the engraved symbol, clenching her fist. When last she had stood here, a bright eyed child of twelve, the future had been clear and bright. Now, with the Guardian dead, and his rider’s sword passed on to her, but yet an exile in her own land, and in the kingdom where she served....where could a homeless warrior go? Into exile, to wander the wilds until some meaningless death found her at last? The weight of the Stormhawk sword was heavy on her back at that moment.
I swore an oath, to protect the crown. Do I seek the answers to my past...or fulfill my duty to my future king?
The distant howl drew closer, until the grey shape of Caradyn was at her side. The wolf looked up at her.
The southern pass will soon close with snow. What have you decided?
Hours later the snow continued to fall, covering the bootprints of a stranger in the ruins. All that was left to mark the way was a symbol engraved above the Sirru emblem, carved with the point of a dagger. The symbol of the drakhyr of old. The symbol of a promise.