Sylvanna pressed deeper into the gloaming, shoulders hunched against a wind that never quite materialised yet found every seam in her cloak to whisper its chill. Lightning answered each nervous breath in muted pulses, tiny veins of silver crawling across the rune at her collarbone before guttering out. The flashes were feeble compared with the storm she normally carried, but in this tainted pocket of forest the very air seemed to drink mana, leaving only the after-taste of ozone on her tongue.
Raëdrithar padded ahead, paws impossibly silent for a creature his size. When his claws touched a knuckled root, sparks crackled, and the root flinched like burned skin. Sylvanna watched the recoil with a pang of sympathy—this wood was alive, and everything alive here hurt. Fungus-bloated trunks shed flakes that drifted like grey snow, sticking to her gauntlets with an acidic sizzle. It took effort not to wipe them away and reveal the tremor in her fingers.
