The frost had returned early.
Not a full storm, just the kind of cold that bit at your knuckles and turned silence brittle.
Liora tightened the scarf around her throat as she stepped through the outer gate. She wasn't supposed to leave the den today. But something had gone wrong.
A scouting party from South Ring was two hours late returning from a water run.
And she had a feeling.
She didn't tell Kael.
But Kaelen followed her anyway.
He caught up with her at the bottom of the slope, breath steady, steps soft.
"You weren't planning to go alone, were you?" he asked.
Liora gave him a side-glance, not stopping. "No one else noticed they were missing."
"I noticed you were missing," he said, matching her pace.
She said nothing. But she didn't ask him to leave.
They found the broken sled trail an hour later. Thin grooves in the snow. And the scent of pine and blood.
Liora knelt beside it. "They passed through here," she murmured. "Then something pulled them off course."
