Reaching High Springs
The trek toward High Springs wasn’t the slow, methodical climb I had expected. It was a flat-out sprint. Silas moved like a mountain lion, his leather cloak snapping behind him as he led me upward. We bypassed the jagged peaks and instead cut through a high-altitude pass where the trees suddenly gave way to a perfectly paved, two-lane road that looked jarringly modern against the wilderness. “The perimeter is just over that ridge,” Silas huffed, his eyes darting to the sky. The horizon was bleeding into a pale, bruised purple. “Once we hit the asphalt, stay in the shadows of the guardrails. The Blood Moon trackers will be looking for paw prints in the dirt, not boot scuffs on the shoulder.” The “static” in my head was no longer a hum; it was a rhythmic thumping, a countdown to my eighte
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