For the next four days, nothing happened.
No blood-curdling screams in the middle of the night. No miasma rising. Not even a flicker of rift-energy detected miles away.
Nothing.
It lulled the students into a false sense of security. The raw fear that had once gripped them—choking, paralyzing, numbing—had begun to dwindle. Bit by bit, their hope returned. They clung to it like fools desperate, daring to believe they might actually survive this ordeal.
But not everyone shared in that fragile optimism.
One girl, in particular, hadn't smiled once in the past four days. She sat with her group—Verena and Kaelira—huddled beside a large, uneven boulder under a crooked tree that barely offered shade. The bark was flaking, and the leaves were dying, but it was still better than nothing.
