My feet take me out past the gardens and straight for the eastern boundary of Silverpaw Academy, where the mountain’s edge plunges off into a dizzying cliff. The mist thickens as I move further, closing in until it wraps around my body—a shroud so dense I can barely see my own hands, let alone what lies a few strides ahead. The damp air muffles sound; even my footsteps are hushed. Still, my senses guide me. I pick up the resin-heavy scent of pine, the sweet rot of moss and needles underfoot, and the faintest give of crumbling stone beneath the ball of my foot. Where stillskins would be blind and lost, I find the way by instinct alone.
The path narrows, stone giving way to packed dirt and gravel, the edges scattered with needles. Ancient pines close in on either side, their trunks vanishin
