Night swallowed the forest whole, a darkness so dense it seemed to drink the very sound from the air.
The strike team had made camp in a shallow hollow ringed by moss-slick boulders, their fire kept low and mean, just enough warmth to keep the chill from settling into bones, not enough glow to betray them beyond the treeline.
Kael took the first watch, Thran the second.
By the time the flames had collapsed into a bed of pulsing embers, most of the group had surrendered to uneasy sleep, all except Valen, who sat apart with his back pressed against a stone, his gaze fixed across the dying fire.
Fixed on Doran.
He'd been staring for a long while, long enough that the silence between them had grown thick as river mud. Doran felt it before he acknowledged it, the weight of that stare boring into his skull like a slow auger.
