The forest waited for them.
Cold, silent, endless.
Lilith stood among the final five hunters at the forest’s edge, her breath turning to mist in the predawn air. The sky above was still gray-blue, the kind of color that tasted like steel and rain. Every sound felt sharper: the creak of leather straps, the clink of metal, the low hum of the runes carved into their weapons.
The trees ahead loomed tall and skeletal, their trunks ink-black against the light. They weren’t ordinary trees; everyone knew that. The Ashen Forest wasn’t a place; it was a memory of the world before humans ruled. It moved when no one was watching. It whispered when the moon rose.
But today it was pitch black because of the new moon. The night when the wolves are the weakest and the hunters are at their best, huntin
