After hours of walking, the sun was finally setting on the horizon.
The light came through the trees at that low angle that turned everything amber and long-shadowed, and the road had narrowed to something that felt more like a deer trail with ambitions than an actual thoroughfare. Nobody had said much in the last hour. The kind of quiet that settled when people were tired and close to something and their bodies knew it before their minds had confirmed it.
Then Valen raised his fist.
Everyone stopped.
From somewhere ahead, carried on the evening air, voices. Not close, maybe three hundred meters, maybe more. The clank of armor. Something that sounded like a fire being fed. And underneath all of it, a low rhythmic sound that took Noah three seconds to identify as dragon breath, the deep cycling of large animals at rest.
Valen turned to them. Held up four fingers, pointed at the trees on either side of the road, made a spreading gesture.
They split without words.
---
