The sixth altar's location was unlike anything he had moved through in this forest.
Not in terrain since the terrain was consistent with the bulk of the Forest of Twin Disasters that shared the same ancient canopy, the same dense root systems, the same quality of air that carried age in it the way some places carried moisture. The forest itself was the same forest.
What was different was the silence that swelled within this area.
Damien noticed it from the air before Skylar had even begun its descent. The ambient essence of the region below was more than present, thick in a way that his senses registered as significant even at altitude.
But the living signatures that populated the forest everywhere else… The mana beasts moving through the undergrowth, the smaller creatures that existed beneath the grade threshold he usually tracked for food, the constant background noise of a forest actively occupied by things going about their lives, those were absent.
Not reduced.
