Chapter 145

• They moved at dawn.
• The fire had been cold for hours, and the ground was still damp from a night mist that hadn’t yet burned off. The forest ahead stretched like a maze—dense with thick roots, sloping rocks, and the occasional shimmer of a ley-line thread glowing faintly underfoot.
• Thalen led the way, his hand never far from the hilt of his curved blade. He said little, eyes scanning the horizon for the next ley-line crossing marked on the Vault’s map. It was said to run beneath the stone arches ahead, just past a set of moss-covered cairns and through a thinning patch of pine.