Chapter 6 · Frontier Lord - Chapter 6: The Boundary Stone Bleeds

The pounding didn't stop.

Ava's boots hit frost-cracked dirt before she could think. Her lungs burned. The boundary stone sat fifty yards past the last shack, half-buried in dead grass, and the noise was coming from underneath it—something rhythmic, deliberate, like a fist on a door.

Rain was already there, crouched low with one hand on the stone. His fingers came away wet. Dark. Not water.

"Blood," he said.

Ava's stomach dropped. "Whose?"

"Not ours." He wiped his hand on his pants, eyes scanning the tree line. "Yet."

She knelt beside him. The stone was old—older than the fief charter, older than her family name. Granite, waist-high, carved with marks she'd never been able to read. Her father had told her once that every noble bloodline planted one when they claimed land. A stake. A promise. A lock.

She'd thought it was decoration.

The pounding came again. Slower now. Heavier.

"We need to move it," Ava said.

Rain's head snapped toward her. "You serious?"

"If something's trying to get out, I want to see it before it decides for us."

"Or we leave it buried and finish the damn wall."

She met his eyes. He wasn't wrong.