The night tastes wrong before anything actually goes wrong, and that’s the part that keeps needling at me as we move, because my instincts don’t usually misfire like this, and when they do it’s never without consequence. The forest is too quiet in the way that feels curated rather than natural, the kind of silence that happens when something has already passed through and stripped the air of smaller life, and every breath I take feels like I’m inhaling a warning I don’t yet have the language to explain.
We move in staggered lines, exactly as planned, not rushing and not hesitating, boots landing softly on packed earth as the trees close in around us. I’m not at the front and I’m not at the rear, positioned deliberately where I can see enough without becoming a focal point, and I tell myse
