Chapter 147

*Elora*

The woods thinned long before the silence did.

Even the air felt strange—hollow, expectant. Each step closer to the Portal-Sentry camp left a deeper imprint on the soil, as if the land itself wanted to remember I had come. My fingers twitched, flame held tightly beneath my skin, coiled like a warning I hadn’t yet spoken aloud. Not for them. For me.

Slo had offered to come. So had Rowan, an