The next morning arrived with a gentle, cinematic hush, the village of Aerthalis bathed in a soft, honeyed light that seemed to emanate from the leaves themselves. I awoke to the distant, rhythmic hum of the forest—a sound that had grown familiar, yet still carried a strange, sentient energy. Every pulse of the wind felt deliberate; every ripple of the stream felt like a spoken word I couldn't quite translate. I dressed with trembling fingers, anticipation and anxiety coiling in my stomach like a restless serpent.
Marcos awaited me at the edge of the courtyard. His expression was a mask of unreadable calm, but his eyes swept over me with the clinical precision of an artisan measuring his materials. Every glance in this place was a weight; every silence was a question of my readiness.
“To
