***Rainah***
The forest had become a cathedral of ice and shadow, a place where every breath crystallized in the air and every movement felt like a transgression against the silence. We were moving through the high timberline, the kind of terrain that tested the limits of endurance, but we were moving with a purpose that had been absent only days before. The hunger was still there, a dull, aching thrum in the background, but it had been eclipsed by something far more potent: the realization that we were not merely surviving. We were becoming.
I led the pack, my senses keyed to a frequency that felt like a raw nerve. Kael was at my flank, his movements heavy but steady, and the younger ones followed in a tight formation that spoke of a newfound discipline. We were no longer the scattered,
