The council does not want me to go.
They dress it up in reason. Risk assessment. Uncertainty. The word unprecedented gets used again, like repetition might turn fear into wisdom. I stand in the center of the chamber and let them talk around me, voices overlapping, arguments circling without ever touching the truth. My hands are folded loosely at my sides, a posture of restraint I learned young. My jaw is locked tight enough to ache.
“There is no verified threat pattern,” one elder says. “We do not send our strongest asset charging blindly into the forest.”
“I am not an asset,” I say flatly.
Several of them flinch. One looks away.
“The disturbance is real,” I continue. “You felt it. The scouts felt it. Whatever did this did not cross our borders by accident. It followed me.”
“That is
