The sky before dawn was still dark. The eastern ridge had only just begun to take on the faintest hint of blue, and the stone walls and fields of Melvina Village still melted into shadow. The Whispering Forest—the dangerous zone that Solenia's scholars had recorded as having "unstable ground veins that distort one's sense of direction"—was visible just beyond the village's eastern edge. Black tree canopies stood in rows, cutting into the sky. Elara stood before the stone wall at the village boundary. Her deep chestnut hair was tied back in a single knot, and over it she wore a thin leather hat. On her shoulder hung a leather case of cartography tools. In the bag at her waist were the parchment and ground-vein ink—a special ink made from powdered monument crystals and tree sap from the Selvatura Mountains, serving as the medium for ground-vein techniques—already thinly applied to her fingertips. It was a habit before departure. The grass at her feet was wet with night dew. "Did you