We broke camp before sunrise, moving fast and quiet through mist that clung low to the forest floor, every warrior among us scanning the tree line for the wrong kind of shadow.
Nothing attacked us that morning. The thing on the ridge, whatever it truly was, seemed content to simply watch, its presence felt rather than seen, a pressure at the back of my neck that never fully lifted no matter how far we traveled. Odessa said little as we walked beside her, her lips pressed into a thin line of concentration, her eyes tracking things the rest of us could not see.
"It is testing the edges of our group," she finally said when I asked what she sensed.
"Looking for the weakest point before it commits to anything direct. That is often how fragments behave, patient in a way full creatures rarely
