The mist of Adrossa did not stay behind immediately. Even after they crossed the markers, it continued following Ren and Sawe along the trail, clinging to the trees, to the wet stones, and to the uneven ground of the mountain. Ren walked a few steps ahead, but sometimes slowed down without noticing, making Sawe adjust his pace behind him. The passage was too narrow for the two of them to walk side by side all the time, and thick roots emerged from the earth like natural obstacles. From time to time, a cold drop fell from the high leaves and ran down the back of Ren’s neck. He simply kept walking, without complaining and without looking back.

Sawe noticed it within the first few minutes.

Ren did not seem proud. It was simpler than that, and maybe that was why it was worse. Looking back would serve no purpose, and Ren had always had a strange relationship with anything he considered useless. Sawe, on the other hand, looked back once. Just once. The mist had already swallowed the stone markers, and Adrossa had become nothing more than a white stain behind them, almost indistinct among the trees.

He adjusted the strap of his backpack better on his shoulder.

“How long are you going to pretend you weren’t bothered?”

Ren kept looking at the trail ahead, stepping around a thick root without slowing down. “Bothered by what?”

“By the whole village waking up before sunrise just to see us leave.”

“Who said I was bothered?”

“Ren, you’re walking like the ground did something to you.”

He looked down by instinct. Some of his footprints were too deep in the mud, marked with unnecessary force. Sawe looked too, but had the rare delicacy not to comment right away. Ren then tried to step more lightly. The result was almost worse, because now he looked like someone trying to imitate a normal person walking after forgetting how normal people walked.

“Better?” Ren asked.

Sawe let out a short sigh and adjusted the backpack on his shoulder. “That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”

“Then speak properly.”

Ren was about to answer, but Sawe stopped before he could say anything. It was not a sudden movement, and maybe that was precisely why Ren noticed it immediately. The feline-man simply stopped walking. First, his ears moved, turning toward the woods on the left; then his hand slowly rose, asking for silence. Ren closed his mouth and stood still.

Something had moved between the trees. Sawe listened for a few seconds, then crouched near the mud and touched an almost erased mark with two fingers. He rubbed the damp earth between his fingertips, his expression becoming more serious.

“Someone passed through here.”

Ren looked into the mist, trying to see beyond the trunks. “From the village?”

“No.” Sawe kept looking at the mark on the ground. “It was going up. Maybe they’re just tracks from one of the hunters, but…”

He did not finish.

Ren glanced back, toward the direction where Adrossa had disappeared.

“I doubt it.”

Sawe raised his eyes to him. “Why?”

“You know why. Everyone dropped what they were doing just for that farewell nonsense.”

“Ren.”

The reprimand came out low, but firm.

Ren looked away.

“What? That’s what happened.”

Sawe remained silent for a few seconds. He wanted to disagree with the way Ren had said it, not with the content. In the end, he slowly let out a breath and looked back at the footprint.

“Even if I ignore the part where you called the entire village’s farewell nonsense… you’re right. Everyone was there.” He ran his thumb over the mark in the mud. “And that is exactly why these tracks make no sense.”

Ren watched the trees to the left. The mist moved slowly between the trunks, hiding anything beyond a few steps.

“Leave it alone, Sawe. Better not waste time here. I want to reach the end of the Primordial Forest before nightfall.”

Sawe did not answer immediately. He was still looking at the mark, as if waiting for it to say something more. Then he stood, wiping his fingers on the side of his pants.

“All right. But from here on, I’m going ahead.”

Ren frowned.

“Why?”

“Because I know the way better than you. And because if I stay behind you, I’ll end up covered in mud up to my ears.”

Sawe went ahead without waiting for an answer. Ren observed for a moment the marks his own boots had left on the path and understood, without admitting it out loud, that Sawe was probably right. Each step sank too deeply when he was not paying attention, and the narrow trail was already being marked as if some heavy animal had come down through it.

“You exaggerate too much,” Ren said, adjusting the backpack on his back.

The mist still covered much of the trail, but it was beginning to open in thin layers between the trees. The Initial Forest was not very extensive, at least not for someone who knew the right paths, but it could easily deceive anyone who strayed from the old marks left by the hunters of Adrossa. Sawe advanced with his eyes attentive to the ground and the treetops, sometimes stopping to confirm an old rope tied to a trunk or a stone scratched with an almost erased mark.

For almost half an hour, nothing but the sound of footsteps and the wind between the leaves accompanied the two of them. Then something moved in the brush to the right.

Sawe immediately raised his hand.

Ren stopped.

The feline-man tilted his head, turning his ears toward the sound. Something small was dragging itself through the wet leaves. It did not seem large enough to be a beast, but it was not light like a bird or a common rodent either. Sawe breathed slowly and pointed two fingers toward the ground, indicating that Ren should wait.

Ren waited.

For three seconds.

Then a green, viscous mass leapt out from behind a root, lunging toward Sawe’s boot.

Ren picked up a stone from the ground and threw it before Sawe even had time to use magic.

The pebble pierced through the creature with a wet pop.

The green slime burst in the air, splattering goo across the nearby leaves.

Sawe stood still, looking at his own hand, still raised. Then he slowly turned his face toward Ren.

“I was already going to handle it.”

“But the slime had already jumped before you even raised your hand.”

Sawe lowered his hand and looked at the goo dripping from a broad leaf. “The point is that when someone tells you to wait, it usually means waiting until that person finishes doing something.”

“I waited.”

“As if three seconds gave me time to do anything!”

Ren passed by him and looked into the brush. Two more slimes were dragging themselves near a stone, perhaps attracted by the movement. He picked up two more pebbles and hit both without changing his expression much. One burst against the trunk of a tree. The other was thrown into a shallow puddle, where it dissolved with a low sound.

Sawe watched.

“You really don’t change, do you?”

“Slimes are easy to kill.”

Sawe opened his mouth, closed it, then pointed to the trail.

“Just walk.”

Ren walked.

The morning advanced without hurry. The mist weakened as they descended, and sunlight began to pass through the trees in narrow bands. The damp earth gave way to firmer ground, covered with dry leaves and exposed roots. The smell of the forest also changed. Near Adrossa, everything still carried the cold of the mountains; down there, there was a stronger smell of wood, fungi, broken bark, and stagnant water.

Ren noticed the difference, but said nothing. The world outside the village seemed to grow little by little.

At one point, the trail was blocked by a fallen trunk. It was thick and covered in moss, stretching across the passage between two tall stones. Sawe stopped in front of it and looked to the sides, searching for a way around without pushing through the dense brush.

“We’ll have to go around,” he said.

Ren put his backpack on the ground.

Sawe turned his face to him.

“Ren.”

“It’s just a trunk.”

“Why do you always have to solve things this way?”

Ren approached, placed his hands under the wood, and lifted.

The trunk came off the ground along with broken roots, dirt, and a few insects that fell in panic. Ren turned his body to move it away from the trail, but Sawe had to take two quick steps back when one end almost hit him.

“Careful! Are you trying to kill me?”

“You wouldn’t die just from that, right?”

Ren threw the trunk aside. It fell among the trees with a heavy thud, sending birds flying in several directions. For a few seconds, the forest answered with scattered noises, leaves shaking and branches moving.

Sawe ran a hand over his face.

“You just warned half the forest that we’re here.”

“Was it better to leave the trunk in the way?”

“There was a third option called moving it with less noise.”

Ren picked up his backpack again.

“I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, I noticed!”

They continued. A little after noon, they stopped near a broad stone to eat. Sawe carefully divided the provisions, separating bread, dried meat, and some of the fruits Ren had knocked down earlier.

Sawe bit into a piece of bread and watched his friend for a few seconds.

“I guess we’ve never been this far from the village, have we?”

Ren turned to him and agreed with a nod. “That’s true.”

“But hadn’t you left the village before?”

Sawe became a little thoughtful.

“Actually, I never left Adrossa after I arrived there. But I remember when Master Myrddin rescued me from the hands of some slave merchants who had invaded my village.”

Sawe seemed to want to say something else, but fell silent. Maybe he was thinking about the village. Maybe about the strange footprint they had found earlier. Maybe about Myrddin, standing before the markers, pretending he did not care as much as he really did.

The sound came when they were gathering their things.

A distant boom.

It was not like thunder. It was drier, heavier, as if something huge had been crushed a few kilometers away. The vibration reached faintly through the ground, but it reached them. Leaves trembled. Small birds fled from the trees. Sawe’s hand stopped over the backpack.

Ren raised his head.

“What was that?”

Sawe did not answer immediately. For a very brief moment, he thought he had felt an immense magical power coming from that direction.

He tightened his grip on the backpack strap.

“I don’t know.”

Ren noticed the hesitation.

“Sawe.”

“I said I don’t know.” The answer came out a little too quickly. Sawe took a deep breath and corrected his tone. “It could have been a large tree falling. Or a beast lower down the slope.”

Ren kept looking at him.

“You don’t seem to believe that.”

Ren looked back as well. The trail they had come from was empty. The mist still moved between the trees, slow and indifferent.

“Do we go back?”

Sawe took a while before answering. He wanted to go back. But going back meant losing time, perhaps entering the denser mist again, and perhaps directly disobeying the last practical order Myrddin had given: advance when the mist opened.

“No,” he finally said. “If it was something near the village, Myrddin would handle it.”

He picked up the backpack and put it on his back.

“Then we keep going.”

“Yes. But let’s speed up a little.”

They moved at a firmer pace. The Initial Forest began to change as the afternoon dragged on.

Sawe stopped before a stone marked with three old cuts.

“We’ve reached the end of the Initial Forest.”

Ren looked around.

“It looks like another forest.”

Sawe pointed ahead, where the trail disappeared between larger trees.

“From here begins the Great Forest of Gardos. It stretches across a good part of the way to the outer routes of Gor’sha. It isn’t exactly orc territory yet, but it isn’t Adrossa anymore either.”

“Are there many monsters here?”

“In this part, not many. At least not near the trail. I think?”

The light was weakening. Under the crowns of Gardos, afternoon died early. Sawe chose a space between three oaks, protected by the roots.

“We camp here.”

Ren dropped the backpack. “Already? We can still walk.”

“Do you want to walk in the dark inside an unknown forest?”

“But we can still see enough.”

“You only see trunks when you hit them.”

Ren frowned. “I don’t hit trunks.”

Ren fell silent. While Sawe organized the perimeter, he asked for dry wood. Minutes later, Ren returned with an exaggerated pile.

Sawe stared at the heap. “Are we cooking or starting a fire?”

“But you were the one who asked for wood.”

“For a campfire, not to destroy the entire forest.”

“Good. There’ll still be some left for tomorrow.”

“If we don’t set the place on fire first,” Sawe sighed. “All right. It works.”

The fire crackled, pushing back the darkness, but the trees seemed to absorb the light. Ren sat down, Garret’s knife at his side. Sawe served dried meat and bread.

“You said it was safe,” Ren commented.

“It’s not as dangerous as it looks.” Sawe chewed. “Only goblins show up around here. They run away before you see them.”

“I’ve never seen one.”

Sawe was surprised, remembering Ren’s isolation. “They’re small. Green. Some talk, others just scream.”

“Humans call them monsters.”

Sawe stirred the fire. “Humans call a lot of things monsters. Things they understand... or things they fear.”

Ren fell silent. Sawe changed his tone.

“If they appear, don’t throw stones.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You threw stones at slimes without even thinking.”

“But slimes are slimes.”

Night fell. Shrill insects sang. Sawe adjusted his cloak.

“I’ll take the first watch.”

“I can do it. You used mana all day.”

“And you carried everything with brute strength.” Sawe was firm. “Rest.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Ren.”

Ren fell silent. He lay down near the backpack, watching the flames. He thought about Myrddin, about the distant boom, about the goblins in the shadows.

Sawe watched the darkness beyond the fire.

On that first night outside Adrossa, neither of them slept properly.