The wait was brief. Too brief.
The shadows along the bark began to stir, restless, writhing like serpents in tar. Luke had barely steadied his breath when figures broke from the black—human shapes, clad in ragged cloaks that blended with the gloom, eyes feverish with zeal. They leapt from the higher branches and slanted ridges of the bark, blades flashing in their hands, voices low and snarling like beasts too used to the hunt.
They came not alone. Shadows coiled with them, threading through their movements, a living shroud that leapt ahead to blind, to suppress, to choke the air. And though Luke and Ilyrana knew those shadows could not cut flesh, their mere presence was enough to stagger the senses. To be swallowed by them, even for a moment, was to drown in blindness and cold. Luke had felt it once already, and the memory still clawed at his nerves.
But they endured.
