The night pressed down heavy upon the borderlands, a black veil broken only by the pale light of the moon.
Step... step... step...
Bennet moved fast, his boots whispering across the uneven ground, cloak flowing behind him as if the darkness itself had chosen to follow.
His eyes flicked constantly across the terrain—every boulder, every ridge, every shallow ditch. He watched the way the land shifted beneath his stride, how tufts of grass bent in the breeze, how the scent of earth clung thick in the stillness of night.
Each sound sharpened his senses—the cry of an owl, the rustle of a hare vanishing into brush.
Nothing was out of place, yet everything felt waiting, undecided.
'The land breathes, but shallowly,' he thought, 'It's caught between calm and storm, like a man waiting for a verdict.'
He walked on, crossing patches of rough soil where roots cracked the earth, then stretches where the ground turned soft with lingering dew.
