Unfortunately enough, the exit portal never came.
And it was slowly getting late.
The sun was gone, swallowed whole by the horizon, and the only light left came from the dying orange glow bleeding through the clouds. Everything else—trees, dirt, blood, and their own shadows—was fading into one big smear of darkness.
So, yeah. They had no choice but to camp.
The clearing near the cliff was as good a spot as any. The edge dropped into an endless black pit of water that moved slow but deep, the kind that swallowed sound. You could hear it if you stood still—the low slosh of the current, the occasional snap of something breaking the surface.
They set up camp at the clearing, under a big tree whose branches spread out wide like twisted ribs. The smell of iron and rot still stayed in the air, the remnants of goblin guts that stained the dirt and even though they'd walked miles away from the battlefield, it didn't feel like enough.
