[After One Week]
It had been a week.
Every morning, Kai prepared the Bloodmoss Soup and Twilight Stem Dish with a reverence that bordered on ritual. He moved in silence, his hands sure despite the exhaustion etched into every line of his face. The ingredients had grown scarce, the forest less generous, as if it too sensed the path they were walking and had begun to withdraw.
Still, he foraged under moonlight and cloud, fingers numb from cold earth and wet stone. He scraped moss from cave walls with a bone knife dulled from repetition, pressed bitter roots between cloth to keep their oils intact. Every sprig, every filament—preserved. Measured. Offered.
This wasn't just survival. It was penance. And Varaan… was changing.
Her Hollowfang form had grown leaner, honed. Her movements were sharper, her silence more watchful. She no longer stumbled when the trees shifted or the wind carried whispers. She seemed to anticipate the forest now, not fear it.
