They noticed the absence before they noticed anything else.
Ren's eyes swept the command line again. It was slower this time, more deliberate. The formations were tight. Too tight. Soldiers stood where they were told, not where instinct would have carried them. Spaces existed that no one had stepped into, gaps that should have been filled without thinking.
That bothered him more than chaos ever did.
"Something's off," he said quietly.
Elara didn't ask what. She already felt it. The way the air refused to settle, how conversations cut short the moment they started. People kept glancing backward instead of forward, as if expecting the ground to accuse them of something.
Nyxa's gaze lifted, unfocused, pupils dilating slightly as if she were listening to something beneath sound.
"They're close."
Tayuko exhaled through his nose. "Who?"
Nyxa didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Forbidden Lands — Southern Solara
Subsurface Shift
The land found a new rhythm.
