Chapter 49. A Voice in the Dark

The howl hadn’t faded. Not really. It clung to the trees like smoke—vibrating through bark, curling beneath Aria’s skin as though her blood remembered something older than memory.

She rose from the ash-covered clearing in a single breath, her body heavy but her stride unbroken. The silence that followed was thick, reverent, and full of eyes. She didn’t see them, but she knew they were there. Just out of reach, just behind branches too still to be empty.

They didn’t walk beside her. That would’ve been mercy.

Instead, they guided her by absence.

No bird stirred in the canopy. No fox darted across her path. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. Only once did she catch a shadow in her periphery—low and four-legged, pacing her on her right flank for several heartbeats before melting back into brush.

It wasn’t a warning.

It was an escort.

The path they led her down wasn’t familiar, not in the way known trails were. But there was an intelligence