The Forest of the Three Suns was not a forest.
Not truly.
It was a scar.
An ancient wound carved into the world when magic was still young enough to be cruel without bothering to hide its fangs.
Samael felt it before he even crossed the throat of the valley.
The air changed.
It grew heavy.
Every breath carried the metallic taste of ancient spells.
Of old blood.
Of death layered upon death.
Here, nature did not grow.
It consumed.
The trees twisted upward like corpses trying to claw their way out of their own graves.
Massive roots tore through the earth like exposed veins.
Crimson moss glowed between the stones.
And in the distance, countless small eyes watched.
Carrion beasts.
Creatures fed for centuries on abandoned bodies.
Predators that had learned this was a place where death always returned to feed someone else.
The moon should have hung above them.
But it did not.
The sky seemed to have swallowed its own light.
No silver.
No radiance.
Nothing.
Only a deep crimson.
Like blood mingled with the ashes of dead galaxies.
Like a mourning so ancient that even the gods dared not name it.
Samael pressed onward.
Silent.
With every step...
More blood.
More iron.
More death.
Then he found the first body.
A rogue.
Its neck broken.
Its spine twisted into an impossible angle.
Its eyes...
Gone.
Torn out.
The king did not even slow his pace.
He continued.
Farther ahead.
Another.
And another.
Then two bodies forced his steps to falter.
Betas.
Moonmount.
Men who had served his House for years.
Traitors.
The evidence was there.
On their arms.
In the runes.
In the messages they had exchanged.
They had helped.
Helped deliver Elizabeth into enemy hands.
Samael felt no pity.
No anger.
Only contempt.
He walked on.
The blood became thicker.
So did the scent.
As though the very heart of the forest itself were bleeding.
Bodies appeared at uneven intervals.
Rogues.
Mercenaries.
Banished wolves.
Human remains.
Remains beyond recognition.
Some split clean in half.
Others hanging from the trees.
Others scattered across the ground in enough pieces to fill several graves.
It did not resemble a battle.
It resembled a sentence.
A brutal sentence.
Methodical.
Personal.
Samael stopped.
His golden eyes settled upon deep impressions carved into the earth.
Hooves.
Large.
Heavy.
Familiar.
The griffin.
Elizabeth's sacred griffin.
The beast had passed this way.
Running.
Fighting.
Perhaps fleeing.
Perhaps protecting.
The tracks disappeared beneath pools of blood.
The king's chest tightened.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
He knew those tracks.
He had known them since Elizabeth had been too small to climb into the saddle without help.
When she insisted the griffin needed to sleep beside her bedroom window.
When she spent hours brushing its feathers while telling ridiculous stories to an animal that clearly understood none of them.
My little girl...
The thought came on its own.
Cruel.
Unwanted.
Human.
Samael quickened his pace.
Then he found it.
Metal.
Silver.
A piece of armor.
Cracked.
Covered in blood.
He bent to retrieve it.
The crest was unmistakable.
Leonia's armor.
The Living Sword.
The sworn guardian.
It had not merely been damaged.
It had been torn apart.
As though someone had tried to rip it to pieces by brute force.
Farther ahead...
Another fragment.
Then another.
Shards scattered across dozens of yards.
A savage battle.
Desperate.
Ferocious.
The kind that only happens when someone has already decided to die protecting another.
The silence grew heavier.
Because there were no bodies.
Not Leonia's.
Not Elizabeth's.
Not even the Temple Hound's.
Nothing.
Only blood.
So much blood that the earth itself looked painted.
Samael knelt.
His fingers brushed across a darkened pool.
Fresh.
Far too fresh.
He closed his eyes for a brief moment.
The bond.
The mark.
Instinct.
Anything.
Any sign.
But the forest swallowed everything.
Its ancient magic devoured every trail like a patient predator.
He rose to his feet.
Then he noticed it.
Something strange.
Very strange.
The deeper he ventured...
the more bodies he found.
And the stronger they became.
Ordinary rogues near the outskirts.
Veterans deeper within.
Ancient warriors farther ahead.
As though someone had been carving a path through layer after layer of defenses.
Alone.
Breaking through.
Killing.
Moving forward.
Killing again.
Moving forward.
Like a storm.
Or an extraordinarily furious princess.
The thought almost drew a smile from him.
Almost.
Then he found something else.
An entire tree split in two.
Not cut.
Blown apart.
And carved deep into the shattered wood...
claw marks.
Large.
Deep.
Violent.
Samael ran his hand across them.
Recognizing them immediately.
Elizabeth.
Without question.
A partial transformation.
The strength of her bloodline.
The very power she hated to unleash.
The same power that surfaced only when someone threatened those she loved.
His chest tightened.
Because it meant two things.
She was alive.
Or at least she had been.
And she had fought.
Fought with everything she had.
Far ahead, deep within the heart of the forest, something howled.
It was not a wolf.
It was not a beast.
It was nothing that should have existed.
The sound tore through the crimson sky.
It made the trees tremble.
It sent the carrion creatures fleeing.
Even Samael came to a halt.
His hand tightening around the fragment of Leonia's armor.
Because for the first time since entering that cursed place...
he felt it.
Faint.
Almost imperceptible.
But real.
A presence.
Distant.
Wounded.
Furious.
And alive.
The Forest of the Three Suns had not yet managed to swallow his daughter.
But it was trying.