POV: Elara
The Black Forest was not meant for the living.
We had been walking for what felt like hours, plunging deeper into a suffocating maze of twisted pines and unnatural, creeping fog. The temperature had dropped well below freezing, frosting the damp earth beneath my bare feet. I followed strictly in the giant’s wake, stepping exactly where his heavy boots had flattened the thorny underbrush.
Rowan moved through the deadly wilderness with the casual, terrifying arrogance of a predator pacing his own cage.
He hadn't put a shirt on. Despite the biting wind, his massive, heavily scarred torso radiated a localized, furnace-like heat that I could feel from two feet away. He walked in absolute silence, his broad shoulders easily clearing a path through the dense branches, his pitch-bla
