Location: Dark Forest, Lower Realm
Date/Time: 1-2 Ashwhisper, 9938 AZI
Realm: Lower Realm
The Dark Forest lived up to its name.
Xingteng had seen ancient forests before—the shadow groves of the Dragon Domain, the twilight woods where her people had hunted for millennia. But this place was different. Older. The trees here didn't just grow; they watched. Massive ironbarks with trunks wider than palace halls stretched toward a canopy so thick that even midday felt like perpetual dusk.
"Stay close," Xinglong murmured from the front of their group. His golden eyes swept the shadows between enormous roots. "The forest is... aware."
Xingteng felt it too. Not hostility—something more complex. Ancient intelligence observing their passage, weighing their intentions against criteria older than dragon civilization itself.
