Timeline: TC1853.11.14 (Evening) — TC1853.11.15 (Morning)
Location: Dead Forest → Thornwall
Three kilometers had never felt so long.
Raven had walked further on broken bones. Had marched through the Whispering Forest with corrupted energy eating at her meridians. Had crawled, once, on a different world in a different life, across salt flats that stripped skin from her knees while something with too many legs tracked her by the blood trail.
Three kilometers through a dead forest should've been nothing.
But her body disagreed. Every step sent dull aches radiating from her ribs — healed but protesting, the bone remembering what it felt like to shatter under a Breaker's fist. Her meridians throbbed with each pulse of spiritual energy, raw channels sealed by cosmic authority but not yet accustomed to conducting power through their new configuration. And her reserves sat at maybe twenty percent. Enough to walk. Not enough to fight.
