More tents stretched into the trees. More firelight. Faint wind tugging at thin banners strung between branches. The elven camp was awake, but tense, quiet in the way cliffs are quiet before falling.
He saw a group of archers lining up in silence, practicing drills in the mist. None of them laughed.
He looked up at the sky.
Overcast.
Clouds layered like stone ceilings.
He lowered his voice, thinking more to himself now.
"If we don't gather the others now, they'll wait too long. Then they'll fall. One by one."
Ashwing exhaled, slow and quiet.
"And if they don't listen?"
Lindarion turned away from the sky.
"Then we do it without them."
No fire. No oath. No fanfare.
Just fact.
He'd burned too many bridges already.
He didn't need more permission.
Only time.
And not much of that left.
—
The testing field wasn't much.
Just a ring of flat earth near the southern edge of the camp, where the trees opened wide enough for duels without burning half the forest down.
