The morning had barely settled into itself when Cassiopeia finally asked the question that had been clawing at her throat since they'd left, the words forcing their way out not because she had found the right moment, but because holding them in any longer felt like choking on something sharp and unfinished.
"I understand Phei sending me to do this..."
Her boots crunched against fallen leaves, the brittle sound unnaturally loud in the stillness that stretched between them, each step disturbing a fragile quiet that did not belong to a living forest.
The air carried the faint chill of early dawn, thin shafts of golden light slipping through the dense canopy above, scattering across bark and soil in fractured beams that illuminated drifting dust and the faint tremble of leaves stirred by a hesitant wind.
It should have felt calm.
Instead, it felt ALIVE... like something was listening.
