More than ten horses moved through the pitch black roads of southern Kastoria, their steady footsteps muffled by the heavy silence of the night.
Very few ordinary travelers would have dared take these roads after dark. The South had a reputation that kept sensible people behind locked doors until dawn, and for good reason. Bandits, beasts, and worse were said to roam once the sun disappeared. Yet for Shigeru's group, the danger hardly seemed worth mentioning. If anything, they looked like the very kind of threat most people would pray not to meet, a large armed group riding together through the night like a pack of raiders with nowhere to be except deeper in the dark.
They had left Minami Kyoto nearly three hours earlier, and still they pressed on.
