Kaelen did not move.
The forest breathed around him,slow, deep, patient breaths that stirred the leaves and bent the branches and whispered secrets he could not understand. The light was green and gold, filtering through the canopy in patterns that seemed to shift when he was not looking. The stream bubbled somewhere to his left. The birds sang somewhere to his right. The insects hummed in the spaces between.
It was peaceful.
It was wrong.
He stood in the center of a small clearing, his hand on the stone in his pocket, his gray eyes fixed on the trees. The sensation of being watched had not faded. It had grown stronger, heavier, more present. The eyes were not just on him now. They were ...in... him. They were reading him. They were turning the pages of his mind like a scholar studying an ancient text.
The dormant system pulsed.
[Host is being perceived. Threat level: unknown. Recommend caution.]
