I wasn’t able to get back to sleep that night. My mind kept replaying every tense word from earlier. I lay there, rigid, listening to the quiet rhythm of Elias’s breathing beside me. Even in sleep, he seemed alert, each inhale and exhale steady and controlled, a reminder of the unshakable presence he carried.
The room was still cloaked in darkness, but faint streaks of light began creeping through the cracks in the walls as the first hints of dawn approached. The silence was broken slowly, almost reverently, by the distant sounds of life outside. Footsteps shuffled across the camp, the creak of leather straps, the low murmur of voices coordinating. They were preparing, I realized—preparing to hide the camp from prying eyes during the day, to make it vanish beneath the forest as though it
