Somewhere else in the forest, a group of six students moved between the trees.
They were talking amongst themselves, relaxed enough that the conversation had drifted away from hunting and into the easier territory of complaints about academy workload and what they were planning to eat when they got back. Nobody was on high alert. There hadn't been any reason to be.
But something felt slightly off.
None of them could name it. It wasn't a sound or a sight or anything concrete enough to point at. Just a vague, nagging wrongness sitting beneath the surface of an otherwise ordinary afternoon walk through the forest.
They ignored it.
Then one of them noticed the road.
It appeared between the trees ahead. It was a clear, open path cutting naturally through the forest, the ground flat and easy underfoot compared to the dense undergrowth they had been pushing through for the past hour. No thick roots to step over. No branches cutting across at face level. Just a clean route forward.
