They found the valley by accident.
Mara had been following a game trail for almost an hour, insisting it was leading somewhere.
"Based on what?" Ashe asked eventually.
Mara glanced down at the faint track beneath the leaning trees.
"Direction."
"That's not evidence."
"It's evidence of direction."
"That is the least useful answer you could have given."
Mara kept walking.
The rest of them followed mostly because, after everything Ossara had taught them, trusting Mara's sense for terrain felt considerably safer than pretending any of them understood this world better.
The trail climbed gradually.
No dramatic rise. No obvious break in the forest.
Then the trees simply ended.
Vane stepped through the last crooked line of trunks and stopped.
A ridge dropped away beneath them.
Below it lay a valley none of them had seen coming.
And for once, the strange light made sense.
