Chapter 214

The forest did not announce itself.

It absorbed.

Sound thinned beneath its canopy. Light fractured into narrow beams that never fully reached the ground. Even the wind seemed to move cautiously here, as if unwilling to disturb something older than language.

Kaia stepped beneath the trees and felt it immediately—

not imbalance.

Withdrawal.

The settlements she had visited before shaped themselves around one another—through tension, motion, division, control.

The forest ...