(Wait... they didn't send a Dread-ranked beast? Then Kael—why were you the first one it found?
Did you know something? No... don't jump to conclusions...)
She looked at Kael from the corner of her eye and said nothing.
Just then, one of Elysia's team stepped forward quickly and interrupted, pointing toward the treeline, where the forest grew thick and dark.
"It went that way!" he told professor slyvia. "Toward the west edge!"
Everyone turned their heads in the direction the student had pointed.
The trees ahead were still moving, their branches swaying unnaturally, as if something enormous had just crashed through.
Broken limbs hung at odd angles, and deep cuts in the ground showed where the beast had thrashed its way through the underbrush.
Leaves were scattered everywhere. The air itself felt strange—dark wisps, like thin trails of smoke, lingered in the space the Shadow Leech had fled through.
It was as if the creature's presence had stained the forest.
