Location:Lower Realm — Frontier territory, southeast of Obsidian City
Date/Time:Mid-Late Cinderfall, 9939 AZI — Afternoon
Realm:Lower Realm
Day:Doha Day 247
The mission was supposed to be simple.
A merchant caravan had reported beast activity along the southeast trade road — three days of increasing aggression, creatures emerging from the forest edge in numbers that suggested territorial displacement rather than normal predation. Something deeper in the wilderness had shifted, pushing lesser beasts outward, and those lesser beasts were pushing into the caravan routes with the desperate aggression of animals fleeing something worse.
Standard pest control. The Academy posted it as a merit contract — two students, forty-eight hours, assess and resolve. Jayde had taken it because the merits were decent, the location was close, and Eden was elbow-deep in a pharmaceutical synthesis that couldn't be interrupted. Solo work. Clean.
