[Ace's POV]
The damp earth swallowed my footsteps as I approached the two prisoners.
They'd been separated from the others—dragged to the edge of the clearing where the torchlight barely reached, where shadows pooled thick and cold. Khaleed's human scent hit me first: sweat, old leather, and the sharp, acrid tang of fear he was trying very hard to hide. Beneath it, the witch's herbal odor—lavender and rot, the cloying sweetness of spell components long since turned rancid.
Their eyes snapped open as I loomed over them.
I let them look. Let them take in the grim tableau of their bound comrades stretched across the clearing in neat, military rows. Magic chains glowed faintly around some bandits' wrists—a sickly pulse of contained power. Others bore standard magic handcuffs. Every mouth was sealed with silver cloth strips that caught the moonlight like a second skin, muffling the groans of the waking and the whimpers of the already conscious.
