"Are you ready to explore it again?"
The question stayed between them.
It did not sound large when Mikhailis said it. His tone was even. Practical. Almost gentle, if someone here still had enough spare strength to call anything gentle. But to Rhaen, the words did not land like a question. They landed like a blade tip pressed to an old scar.
She did not answer.
The little chamber held its low warmth around them. The fire under the improvised cooking circle had dropped into a steady, patient burn, red at the center and soft orange at the edges. The ants kept working in the walls with those small, dry clicks that somehow managed to sound both industrious and unsettling. The smell of broth, roots, fungus, and rendered fat still lingered in the close air. It should have felt safer than before.
It did not.
The moment the question entered her, her body answered before her mind could put language around it.
Ashen River.
The wrong dark.
