The forest swallowed them within the first mile.
Lira had seen the tree line from the pack hall windows for twelve years, a dark border at the edge of the training courtyard that marked the boundary between the world she knew and the world she did not. From behind glass it had looked like a wall, solid and flat, something you could lean against or press your face to but never pass through. From inside it, walking beneath the canopy with wet branches brushing her shoulders and the ground soft and uneven under her boots, the forest was nothing like a wall. It was a living thing, and it breathed around them, creaking, dripping and rustling with small movements that could have been wind or animals or nothing at all. The canopy above was so dense that the morning light reached the ground only
