The forest did not thin quickly, as if reluctant to relinquish him, each gnarled root and moss-drenched trunk conspiring to slow his stride just long enough for the weight of what he carried to settle properly into his bones. The new blade—still unnamed, still singing in a tongue older than speech—hung across his back like a second spine, and with every step, Caliste could feel it drawing from something deep within him, not as a parasite but as a partner long overdue for reunion.
The air was different now.
Thicker.
Suffused with a tension that didn't yet have a shape.
The sort of quiet you only found in the breath before something broke.
He moved without haste but with precision, not because he doubted the direction—he didn't—but because haste would dishonor the pull of the blade and the fire it had reawakened. Each crunch of underbrush beneath his boots was a small proclamation: I am coming. I remember now. I do not need to run.
Hours passed uncounted.
