The night did not ease the tension that had settled across the camp.
Even after Nyra returned from the northern boundary, even after the fires had burned down to glowing embers and the last patrols had rotated through their routes, something about the air refused to return to normal. The forest beyond the shelters remained still beneath the moonlight, but it was not the kind of stillness that brought comfort. It was the kind that made every sound feel deliberate, every shadow feel intentional, as though the world itself had begun listening in ways it never had before.
Nyra moved through the camp slowly, passing between sleeping shelters and quiet fires that had been reduced to ash and warmth. Wolves lay scattered across the clearing in restless sleep, some shifting slightly at the fainte
