---
The road out of the forest did not feel like victory.
It felt like permission.
Sunlight slid between twisted branches, warmed the stone, and made the dead woods look less like a graveyard and more like a place that simply hated visitors. Sekhmet walked in front, steady pace, eyes scanning the trail. Lily walked slightly behind him at first, then beside him when the morning proved quiet. Bat Bat fluttered overhead in lazy circles, occasionally diving low to peek at a suspicious bush like it expected a monster to be hiding there out of spite.
Flap… Flap… Flap…
The silence from the kobols continued.
No distant howls.
No barking chatter.
No scraping claws on stone.
Sekhmet did not trust it, but he accepted it. Purgatory was not the kind of place that explained itself.
After a few hours, Lily's patience finally ran out.
"Sekhmet," she said, voice calm but persistent, "about that storage."
