To reach Hematheas, one could not simply follow the roads most people trusted.
The maps made that clear.
Ashenfen lay like a dark scar across the centre of the continent, a vast forest so dense and old that even sunlight struggled to find its way through the canopy. Trade routes curved around it in wide, careful arcs, as though the land itself warned travellers away. Merchants preferred longer journeys, higher costs, and weeks added to their travels rather than pass beneath those ancient boughs.
And for good reason.
Ashenfen had long been infamous—not for monsters alone, but for ambushes. Caravans vanished there. Wagons were found splintered and burned. Survivors spoke of masked figures, swift shadows between trees, arrows loosed from nowhere. Bandits, the world called them. Organized. Ruthless. Untraceable.
But Luke knew better.
They were never bandits.
They were dark elves.
