Morning fog clung to the trees when they entered Blackroot Forest.
The canopy was dense enough that the fog didn't fully clear even as the sun rose — it just thinned, shifting from white to grey, hanging between the trunks in patches that muffled sound and shortened sight lines. The roots of the blackroot trees themselves ran thick across the ground, overlapping and tangled, the kind of terrain that rewarded careful footwork and punished distraction.
Lysander walked near the back of the group.
Bran had taken the front without being asked — the natural position for someone carrying a tower shield, something to put between the group and whatever came first. Lyra moved off to one side, slightly apart, her eyes tracking the canopy and the middle distances in the specific pattern of someone who thought in terms of sight lines. Taro walked ahead of Lysander, stretching his shoulders intermittently, wolf ears shifting with each new sound the forest produced.
The second-year supervisor followed at the rear. He was competent enough — calm, experienced with the route, his mana presence steady. This was a standard first mission for him. Routine.
Lysander wasn't counting on it staying routine.
"Mostly wolves and goblins out here," Lyra said quietly. She was scanning a cluster of trees to the left as she spoke. "Some forest spiders in the deeper sections. Nothing that should give us trouble at this range."
Bran nodded. "We stay together, we stay mobile, we should be fine."
Taro looked back at Lysander. "You're quiet."
"I'm usually quiet."
"More than usual."
Lysander glanced at him. Taro's ears were forward — alert, picking up on something his words hadn't quite registered yet. Good instincts. Better than he showed most of the time.
"It's fine," Lysander said.
Taro held his gaze for a second. Then turned back to the path.
They pushed deeper. The fog thinned gradually but the forest didn't open up — the trees grew closer together, the undergrowth denser, sunlight reaching the floor only in scattered patches. The sounds of the outer forest fell behind them and the sounds of the deeper forest took over. Different bird calls. The distant sound of water somewhere. The occasional crack of something moving through undergrowth far enough away to be irrelevant.
Three wolves came out of the brush twenty minutes in.
Thorn wolves — spike-covered fur, red eyes, pack hunters. Low rank but they moved in coordination, testing the group's edges before committing. Bran's shield came up immediately. Lyra already had an arrow drawn. Taro dropped into a ready stance.
The fight was quick and functional. Bran anchored, Lyra took one from range, Taro and Lysander handled the other two in close. Lysander used basic quick draw — fast draws, clean cuts, the click of each return to sheath. Nothing unusual. Just speed and timing applied to low-rank monsters.
Thirty seconds. Three wolves down.
Taro shook his hand out. "Easy enough."
Lyra frowned slightly. She was already scanning the tree line again, not the wolves. "Something feels off."
Taro looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know yet."
She wasn't wrong. The forest had gone quiet after the wolf fight in the way forests sometimes went quiet when something larger had decided to pay attention. Not the absence of sound — the specific held quality of things that had stopped moving.
They continued deeper.
Ten minutes later Bran stopped walking.
On the path ahead — a dead goblin. Not killed by the group. Not killed recently. It lay on its side in the middle of the path with the specific wrongness of something that had been crushed rather than cut or burned. No weapon marks. No magic residue. Just — crushed, as if something enormous had stepped on it without particularly noticing.
Bran crouched beside it. "No wounds."
Lyra came closer. "Crushed." She looked up slowly. "By something very heavy."
The footprints were nearby once you looked for them — pressed deep into the soft earth beside the path, each one larger than a human torso. The spacing between them was wide. Whatever had made them was not small and it had not been moving slowly.
Taro stared at the nearest print. "...What makes tracks like that?"
Nobody answered.
The system appeared briefly in Lysander's vision.
ABYSSAL SYSTEM — WARNING
Large monster activity detected.
Proximity: Closing.
He closed the window.
Then from somewhere deeper in the forest — muffled by distance and trees but unmistakable in its scale — a sound rolled through the air. Deep. Heavy. The kind of sound that wasn't a roar exactly but carried the same information a roar did.
Something very large was close.
The five of them stood in the sudden silence of the forest and looked at each other.