For the next several days, life inside the testing ground became a routine—tedious, repetitive, yet marked with moments that reminded Luke he was still far from anything resembling safety. Each morning began the same way: he, Ilyrana, and Vartha rising with the dim light that trickled across the horizon, eating a modest meal, and returning once more to the task of tracing the trails that cut into the wilderness.
Every shorter path was entered, explored, and crossed off. Some were little more than winding walks through stretches of rock and dust that ended in sudden cliffs or walls of stone, others carried faint signs of former activity—scratched markings against rock, bones bleached from exposure, even the occasional broken weapon rusting into the dirt. None of them led to a stronghold. None of them held answers.
What they did hold, however, were monsters.
