Keanu
The forest was old.
The trees here were massive, their trunks wider than cars, their canopies so dense that the sunlight filtering through looked like it had been chewed up and spit out in thin, golden threads. The undergrowth was thick with ferns and moss that covered everything in a carpet of green so vivid it almost looked fake. The air smelled like wet soil and flowers and something underneath it, something ancient that had no name but made the hairs on my arms stand up.
I’d been walking for hours.
Cain’s maps were good. He’d marked the likely growth zones for the noctis bloom in red ink, with notes about terrain, water sources, and the “feral supernatural creatures” that populated the deeper part of the forest. His handwriting was surprisingly neat for a man who could crush
