The scent was faint, barely clinging to the air, but it was there.
Aziz moved through the forest, silent as the wind, his sharp eyes scanning the ground for any signs of the Snatcher's trail. Nothing. Whoever they were, they were skilled—skilled enough to cover their tracks even from him.
This hunt was proving to be difficult.
Without the Bloodcoil Sect's Mystical Arts, he was relying on raw instinct, on the honed senses that had carried him through Peklo Forest, through the Exam, through war. He had to make do with what remained.
Then—a glint.
A small object caught the moonlight, barely noticeable beneath a bed of fallen leaves. Something metal. Aziz leapt down from the trees, landing in a crouch. Nana, the moon, watched from above as he reached forward, fingers closing around a cold, familiar shape.
A brooch.
