The light came slowly, not like dawn in the living world, but as though something deep beneath the Reach gave a shuddering sigh and allowed a mockery of morning to stain the air.
It was a pale, sickly illumination—washed-out silver smeared across the horizon like dying breath.
It did not chase away the shadows so much as it coaxed them into hiding, hissing and dragging their malformed edges back into cracks and caverns where they belonged.
The light here did not warm. It only revealed.
Ian stood alone at the edge of their makeshift camp, a jagged overhang of petrified bone and ash-root sheltering them through what was left of the night.
His eyes scanned the landscape with something between hunger and fury, his jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
He hadn't seen it.
Not even a glimpse.
"When you enter the Reach, there will be one who knows you…"
He remembered the words of Darkmist like a prayer—or a curse.
