The forest that stretched beyond the capital was darker than Isla remembered.
Trees leaned toward the narrow road, their branches heavy with mist, their roots swallowing the path like veins of the earth. The silence was near suffocating—no birds, no rustle of life—only the dull rhythm of her horse's hooves striking the damp soil.
She had left before sunrise, without ceremony, without escort. Even Luca did not follow this time, though she could feel his worry clinging to her like a ghost. She told herself this was only a journey for clarity, not madness. But the further she rode, the more the shadows whispered otherwise.
It had been weeks since she'd heard that voice in the war room. Since that moment when the flames seemed to speak in Dante's tongue. Every night since, his presence had lingered—sometimes as a whisper in her dreams, sometimes as a feeling behind her shoulder when she stood alone.
