Thankfully, they were able to rest without any issues; as a result, the soldiers were able to calm their nerves. It was very needed with how tense everything had become, and Morena was beginning to worry that people would start cracking.
The following morning, they packed up and left before the crack of dawn, and no one spoke much, not even Alina. The soldiers had grown quiet, focused only on the sound of boots against dirt and the rhythm of the wagons behind them.
For a while, nothing happened; it was just trees and silence, and this would've been enough for all of them had it kept up. However, nothing goes the way you truly want it to. As the morning stretched into noon, the path began to change.
It was then that they saw it on the ground: tracks.
At first, it was so faint that Morena wouldn't have noticed it without the AI notifying her. A few broken branches, a half-buried fire pit, the smell of burnt wood still clinging to the air.
