Because I can see it now.
Clear.
The direction.
The endpoint.
My hand stills.
“Finish it,” he says.
I look up at him.
And this time, I don’t lower my gaze.
“They’ll reach the central plains near the tree line,” I say quietly.
His eyes sharpen.
“And?”
My throat tightens.
The words scrape on the way out.
“My village is there.”
Silence settles between us.Then he turns and sweeps away without another word. All I can do is hope he helps.
16
VERR
The report is still warm when it reaches my hand, the parchment holding a faint residual heat from transit magic as if it hasn’t fully decided it belongs in the physical world yet. The ink smells sharp and metallic, not quite settled into the fibers, and I don’t like that; rushed work usually means someone is trying to outrun something, and that rarely ends cleanly.
“Another one?” I ask, already breaking the seal with my thumb.
Skot stands across the table with his usual stillness, hands folded neatly behind his back like he was placed there rather than having walked in. “Yes.”
That’s all he gives me, which is enough to confirm this isn’t routine chatter dressed up as urgency. I unfold the parchment and scan quickly at first—location, loss estimates, supply disruption—then slower when the repetition starts to stand out in a way I don’t like. The language is clean, detached, almost clinical, but the pattern underneath it is anything but.
“North corridor again,” I mutter, dragging my eyes back to the beginning.
“Expanding,” Skot says, not raising his voice, not shifting his posture, just correcting.
I glance up at him, irritation flickering, because I don’t like being corrected when I haven’t decided I’m wrong yet. “Is it?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in that single word pulls my attention back to the parchment, and this time I follow the route markings instead of the text. Inked lines cut across the page in uneven strokes, but the direction is clear enough, and the spacing between attacks is too consistent to be coincidence.
“Bandits don’t move like this,” I say, more to the pattern than to him.
“No.”
“Orcs do.”
“Yes.”
