They continued across the Lands of Stone.
The geography shifted beneath them as they flew, forests giving way to rocky outcroppings and then to grasslands that stretched toward distant horizons.
Herds of eland moved across the plains in the thousands, their spiral horns catching sunlight as they grazed on vegetation that somehow thrived in the thin soil. Zebras mingled among them, their striped bodies creating patterns that seemed to shift and flow like living art.
Damian watched it all pass beneath him, but his mind remained elsewhere.
He kept seeing the child holding its mother's hand.
Small fingers wrapped around larger ones. Both still. Both cold. Both beyond any help he could have offered.
The images wouldn't leave him. Every time he blinked, they returned with fresh clarity. The broken bodies. The scattered huts. The absolute finality of what had happened to people who had done nothing wrong except exist in the wrong place at the wrong time.
