They crossed the line sometime just before dawn.
Not a visible thing. No rune-marked stone, no shimmering curtain of magic.
Just a feeling.
Lyra's steps slowed instinctively. She didn't speak. Just reached for her blade, not drawing it, but letting her fingers rest on the hilt like a habit she'd never unlearned.
"There are birds now"
Kaal noticed. He always did.
"You feel it?" he asked quietly.
She nodded once.
Behind them, Thalin said, "The wind direction shifted."
"Congratulations," Lyra muttered. "You're learning."
They kept walking. Slowly now.
The trees grew thicker, roots tangling underfoot like veins. The mist was thinner, but the silence deeper, an older kind. The kind that only settled where something had been still too long.
They came to a clearing.
Too round, too symmetrical to be accidental.
Kaal slowed. "Lyra."
"I see it."
She stepped in first. Just a few feet.
Nothing happened.
Then...
The air pulsed.
Like a heartbeat pressed against her ribs from the outside.
They didn't speak as they moved into the open.
Lyra counted the trees.
The stones.
The birds that weren't singing.
She saw it before it happened.
The flicker of movement in the canopy. The glint of steel, not drawn, but ready.
She exhaled.
Then said, "We're about to have company."
Kaal froze. "How many?"
Thalin looked up. "I don't see..."
"Exactly."
The first arrow hit the ground at Lyra's feet.
Not a warning.
A message.
'We see you.'
She didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
She stepped in front of Kaal as more figures emerged from the trees, silent, cloaked in bone-pale cloth and bark armor, masks carved with symbols she didn't recognize. Some wore blades. Others held staves or curved bows already notched.
No words.
Just formation.
Clean. Efficient.
Lyra's hand hovered at her side, ready.
She wasn't stupid.
She could take five. Maybe seven if they got careless.
There were at least twenty.
And Kaal wasn't in fighting shape.
She didn't sheath her blade.
But she didn't move either.
Behind her, Thalin raised his hands slowly. "We're not here to fight."
One of the masked figures stepped forward. A woman, judging by the shape of her armor. Her mask was plain, but the cloth at her throat was dyed a deep rust-red, something ceremonial, maybe.
She looked at Lyra.
Direct.
Unflinching.
Then she said, "How did you cross the boundary?"
Lyra blinked. "You're welcome, I guess."
No response.
Kaal stepped forward, just slightly. "We didn't mean to trespass."
The woman's head tilted. "No outsider has found us in over three hundred years."
Lyra muttered, "Yeah, well, I guess we're trendsetters."
"I don't think this is a situation for jokes."
Figures closed in, not threatening, but firm.
Tactical.
Lyra tensed again.
Then Kaal's leg gave just slightly beneath him.
Lyra grabbed his arm to steady him. In that moment, split, fragile, stupid, three of the masked strangers moved.
She turned.
Blade ready.
Stopped cold.
Kaal was surrounded.
Not harmed. Not touched.
Just... surrounded.
She met the red-cloaked woman's eyes. "Try it," Lyra said. "Pick one of you. I'll make sure they don't walk again."
The woman didn't blink. "We don't harm what we don't understand."
"Then let me explain..."
"You crossed a boundary that cannot be crossed. We will not harm you. But you will come with us."
"And if I say no?"
The woman paused.
Then, quietly: "You will follow him."
Lyra turned.
Kaal had already stepped forward.
She glared at him. "You're really bad at this whole 'don't get taken' thing."
He shrugged. "They're not attacking."
"Yet."
Thalin lowered his arms. "If we're going to get answers, this is the only way."
"I have no questions," Lyra growled.
Still, she didn't resist as they stepped closer.
They didn't bind her.
Didn't blindfold her.
They didn't have to.
They moved like ghosts, and the path they took was one she could barely follow, twisting between trees and shadows, stone and light.
She didn't know when they left the forest.
Or when the silence changed again.
But she knew the boundary was gone behind her.