The forest was quiet.
Not the gentle quiet of rest, but the sharp, brittle silence that comes after something has broken.
Lumora stood still, her bare feet pressed into damp earth. The air was heavy with the smell of rain and ash. Above her, fractured beams of light broke through the canopy, glinting off fine motes drifting in the air — tiny ghosts of a fire long gone.
She clutched the scarf tighter around her neck. It wasn't hers — the threads were old, frayed, carrying the faintest trace of a scent she couldn't bear to lose.
Nyxie crouched a few paces ahead, her dark hair spilling forward as she traced something in the soil with a fingertip. "They were here," she murmured. Her voice was low, not wanting to disturb the stillness. "Your Master fought hard... but the trail ends here."
Lumora's eyes flicked to the charred remains of a tree. The bark was peeled back, blackened and cracked. She could almost hear his voice, calm but unyielding, telling them to run — to live.
They had run.
Now, they were alone.
Nyxie straightened, brushing dirt from her fingers. Her shadow seemed to stretch unnaturally far in the muted light, curling like smoke toward Lumora's feet. "We'll find him," Nyxie said, but there was an edge to it — a stubbornness that sounded almost like fear.
Lumora didn't answer. Her gaze was on the horizon, where the forest thinned into a ridge of jagged stone. The wind shifted, cool against her cheek, and carried with it something strange — not the scent of ash, but of iron and rain-soaked stone.
Something was waiting out there.
And it was not their Master.
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