The forest was darker than Hain remembered it, perhaps because night fell upon Sawoldor this time around.

Everything was covered in pitch-black darkness, so thick it almost choked him out of air.

In the stillness, he saw nothing out of the ordinary – nothing that arrested him and alerted his senses.

He wished he could summon a torch from his palm just like the druid did a few days ago.

But even if he could do that, he knew it would be a foolish thing to do. What if the man with the boots saw the flickering light and caught him?

He couldn’t let that happen.

There was no easy way out of this than taking it easy and choosing his steps with the utmost care until he became accustomed to the darkness.

As he was having these ruminations, an owl hooted somewhere to his left and rooted him to the spot.

Stranger still, a whistling gust of wind blew and rattled the entire woods out of nowhere. It sounded like something between a wailing spectre and a woman in distress.

The foreboding howls drowned out his cries, as if on purpose. No matter how many times he called out to the headmaster’s daughter, his pleas fell on deaf ears.

Where could she have gone off to? Advancing without really knowing where to go, he tirelessly looked around himself to catch a glimpse of the girl and bring her back to Lárhus – whether she liked it or not.

He baulked and stepped away so fast that he almost lost his footing and landed on a pool of mud.

There, a few inches from him, stood a familiar creature. It was that raven again, the one he saw back in the Forgotten Forest. He was positive!

The slash under its murky eyes was still there, intact and in plain sight as if the raven deliberately wanted him to know its identity shrouded in mystery.

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Another raven joined it.

Cawing and hopping around eagerly, they beckoned him to tail them to a secret place only they knew.

Hain crouched and stretched out a hand, but the strange birds jumped back as if frightened. Hain knitted his brows.

One of them turned its beak to the right, towards a meandering forest trail obscured by bushes on either side and cawed with all its might.

Did it want him to follow the trail? Why?

As he hesitated, the other raven took hold of his trousers and pulled him towards the meandering trail.

Wandering through the choking darkness that kept growing darker and more profound, Hain fumbled to hold on to a branch or stick that could help him escape the raven.

That’s when a spine-chilling cry broke the prevailing silence and sent chills down his spine.

The hoot of the owls let up as if on purpose, and the ravens vanished from view just as suddenly as they appeared.

Everything happened so fast that he didn’t even notice the strange birds’ absence until much later.

He ran in the direction of the cries that grew louder and louder with each passing second, unsure of where to put his feet or what awaited him in the distance ahead.

The devilish trees stretched out their arms and cut into his skin and tore his cloak apart from all directions, trying to slow him down and hinder him.

Halfway across the fading forest trail, he finally found the source of the cries reverberating throughout the vicinity.

It was Elise. She leaned against one of the larger, uprooted trees. Her head was buried in her knees, crying soundly, as he approached her.

She peeked up. Her misty eyes were bloodshot. Leaping forwards, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held onto him for dear life.

What happened to you, he wanted to ask, but she wouldn’t stop crying. When she finally calmed down, she pointed at a large clump of rose bushes somewhere to their left.

“Something’s in there!”

The bushes rattled and moved unnaturally, swaying ever so subtly that it was hard to make out in the darkness around them.

But that was not what caught his attention.

Through the gaps in the wilting branches, something darker than the rotting leaves emerged, something green and grimy.

“Stay here,” he said as he decided to take a closer look. Elise rose to her feet as well and clung to his arm, digging her nails in.

Her darting eyes searched the vicinity for any signs of danger, perhaps too afraid to be left all alone.

He barely bared the thorny branches and took a look at what hid behind the clump of bushes when the dirty shade of green became luminous and bright yellow.

Before he could stop her, Elise pushed him aside, slipped away through the gap in the bushes, and disappeared from his sight.

His eyes widened as another cry came through and he stumbled up on his feet and leapt through the bushes with his heart in his mouth.