The bright morning sun rays, filtering through thick and dense leaves above their heads, cast different broken patterns on the ground of the forest floor as the group, comprising a number of persons, continued ahead. Though the eerie silence of this forest environment was not so terribly oppressive and stiflingly dead at that moment, there still brewed amongst them a tacit tension; the atmosphere wrung tight with unsaid emotions.
David strode ahead, his piercing eyes watchfully scanning the trail before him, while the shard itself was wrapped and tucked away in his pack, yet he seemed to feel its light presence as if it were near at hand, a pulse apparently to vibrate in time with the beat of his very heart.
