While Dex was entirely absorbed in analysing the Dark Elf's arrow, lost in his deductions about the nature of the poisoned wood and the ancient engravings, Lumia was standing behind him like a sculpture of pure silver in the midst of this forgotten ash. Her wide silver eyes were not looking at the broken arrow that held her companion's attention, and she did not concern herself with the rational forensic analysis he was conducting. Her Celestial senses operated in an entirely different way: she did not search for material evidence, but detected the subtle distortions in the fabric of the place, those invisible undulations that violent interference in the forest's natural balance leaves behind.
The surrounding forest appeared still, but to Lumia this stillness was distorted by a faint dissonance. Without warning, in a fluid, soundless motion like a ghost, she raised her right hand and pointed her slender, faintly luminous finger toward a shrub of enormous black-leaved fern several metres away, crouching in a near-dark corner near the roots of the petrified tree.
The shrub's dense branches had been broken in a violent and brutal manner, entirely inconsistent with the slow wind at these depths, and impossible to attribute to the passage of small animals or enormous insects that weave through leaves with flexibility. The branches had been snapped by brute force, as though a very heavy body had stepped on them deliberately or with complete indifference to leaving a trace.
Dex noticed her signal. He raised his eyes from the arrow and followed the direction of her finger. The moment his gaze fell on the broken shrub, an immediate transformation occurred in his being. With every step he took toward that spot, the calm and relaxed features of his face began to alter. The slight victor's smile that had formed on his lips upon finding Okonnor's trail and confirming the soundness of his route began to fade gradually, as though icy water had been poured over the flames of his enthusiasm.
In its place settled a dark, hard, and extremely familiar expression: the Prisoner's gaze. That cold and calculating look that appears in the eyes of a man sentenced to life imprisonment when he discovers, in the middle of his meticulous escape attempt, that another prisoner in the adjacent cell is digging in the same tunnel, and that his secret plan is no longer his alone. In a fraction of a second he understood he was not the only one who had a plan to reach the great prize.
Dex reached the shrub and crouched once more on one knee, bringing his face close to the sticky ground. He moved the broken leaves with care and began analysing the footprints pressed into the damp clay soil, not yet fully dried.
These were not the faint, shallow marks that elves left with their legendary lightness, those who walk across fields of grass without breaking a single stalk or leaving a visible imprint. Nor were they the hoofprints or claw marks of the forest's wild beasts. Before him instead were deep, geometric, clearly defined impressions of extremely heavy military boots.
He ran his fingers along the edges of one imprint in intense concentration.
"This pressure at the toe here… and this squared indentation at the heel…" he murmured to himself. The boots were reinforced with serrated steel plates at heel and toe to guarantee maximum stability on slippery terrain.
"Damn it," Dex swore in a low voice dripping with anger and frustration, pressing his hand into the depth of the imprint in the clay. "These are not beast tracks searching for prey, and not the tracks of elves who live in harmony with nature. These are human combat boots, engineered specifically to bear the weight of heavy armour and large weapons."
But the matter did not stop at shape alone. Through the flow of Phoenix Mana sensitised in his veins, and by measuring the exaggerated depth of pressure the boot had exerted in the spongy ground, Dex was able to read something beyond mere physics. He could estimate that the owner of this imprint was not a common human soldier struggling under the weight of armour: this was a seasoned warrior of at least Rank B. How did he know? Because the faint Mana residue emanating from the imprint clearly indicated that the foot's owner had been pumping concentrated quantities of magical energy into the muscles of their legs during the run, not merely to increase speed in this suffocating environment, but to increase stability and prevent the body from slipping. This muscular-magical technique, known as the Heavy Step, was only mastered by warriors who had fought hundreds of battles.
Dex continued his obsessive search around the broken shrub, attempting to extract any additional clue. At the point where one broken branch met a large, sharp thorn, something very small glinted under the light of Lumia's aura. Dex picked it up with extreme care between his index finger and thumb, bringing it close to his eyes to see it clearly.
It was the remains of an extremely thin thread, barely visible, woven in a dark blue colour bordering on black.
He rubbed the thread between his fingers. It was not ordinary silk or wool spun in villages. Its texture was hard, slightly tacky, and exuded an extremely faint chemical smell resembling burnt oil and sulphur flower. This fabric had been treated chemically and magically to be tear-resistant, resistant to minor fires, and capable of deflecting the surface poisons that the forest's plants might secrete.
"Blue Tarus silk," Dex whispered with intense displeasure, his eyes narrowing in concentration. This was not worn by amateur adventurers who gathered copper coins, nor by the regular soldiers of the Empire who adhered to heavy, noisy iron and silver armour.
He was silent for a moment, connecting the evidence: reinforced boots, Rank B warriors, and Tarus silk resistant to harsh conditions.
('"This is the unified and distinctive uniform of professional mercenaries, specifically those affiliated with the major underworld guilds of the capital." Dex understood in that pivotal moment that the scene had become far more complex and dangerous than he had imagined by several magnitudes. The forest, which he had believed to be a battlefield between himself and the beasts and nature on one side and Okonnor's trail on the other, was no longer that. A third party had entered the game board, one that fought not for honour, and was not driven by desperation or the need to survive as he was, but that fought for pure greed, gold, and rewards. In the dark world of the novel in which he now lived, greed knew no mercy, and mercenaries left behind nothing but charred corpses to guarantee a monopoly over the spoils. Dex's brows furrowed sharply, and his jaw set until his muscles stood out. He looked at Lumia, his eyes reflecting the Phoenix fire beginning to blaze in his heart: "It appears we are not the only ones searching for Okonnor's elixir… We have guests. And very unwelcome ones."')