Northern wind came early that morning, dragging a knife's edge across the clearing.
The camp had been stripped to its bones—no lingering embers, no stray scraps of cloth, no sign that men and women had lived here for months.
Lan stood at the center of it, his pale-grey eyes sweeping the ground like a final inspection.
The talismans that had once shielded them from eyes both mortal and imperial lay in Miller's hands, their faint glow dying as they were rolled and bound in oilcloth.
One by one, the protections fell, and the cold of the real world began to seep in.
The forest around them groaned under the wind. Branches creaked. Frost bit into bark. Beyond those trees lay the open wastes of Ranevia—a land stripped, gutted, and forgotten by the Solaris crown.
A land that still bore scars of gold fever, the shattered mines, and the bloody exodus that had followed.
Lan breathed in the sharp air and let it burn his lungs.
"We leave now," he said simply.
