"A knife," Vorrack repeated, letting the word hang in the air like a blade suspended above them all. "Or a sword, you said?"
Raul nodded weakly, wiping at his nose with the back of his trembling hand. "I—I don't know for certain. But the cuts were clean. Precise. Not like claw marks. Not like anything an animal would leave."
A murmur rippled through the crowd, low and uneasy.
Vorrack turned slowly, his gaze drifting — deliberately, almost lazily — toward Kael's hip, where the hilt of Night-Fang caught the morning light in a thin, dark gleam.
He said nothing.
He didn't need to.
Every eye in the clearing followed the same path he had taken, and the silence that followed carried a different weight than before — no longer uncertain, but heavy with the particular clarity of a crowd arriving at the same terrible thought all at once.
"Someone skilled with a blade…" someone murmured. "There's just one person who excels in it."
