Ethan stretched his soul sense outward again, but this time, instead of expanding it in all directions, he focused it like a thread, pushing toward a single point.
To his surprise, doing so increased his range. Like stretching dough, his awareness extended farther and farther, until he reached a spot that felt… different.
This was it.
The forest behind the village was made up of perfectly aligned trees. Not naturally grown—planted.
By their spacing, there should have been another tree standing in the spot he was sensing.
"We should check it out," Ethan said.
He must have gotten some clue. The others shared the same thought as they followed him into the dense woods.
They walked for about five hundred meters before Ethan suddenly stopped. He knelt, running his fingers over the base of a tree stump, a stump that had been cleanly cut.
