What the hell is that?!"
It was a feminine voice. And the voice sounded utterly shocked.
Noah spun around to find Nami standing at the clearing's edge. She was maybe fifteen feet away, give or take. Her training clothes suggested she'd dressed in a hurry rather than sleeping gear. Her hair was disheveled, strands falling loose from the braid she normally kept it in.
But none of that mattered because her eyes had gone wide. They were fixed on something past him. On the red mist that was still approaching from the forest edge. On the massive shape moving within that crimson fog. On the heat waves that were making the air shimmer despite the distance still separating them.
She was staring at the phenomenon with her face cycling through confusion, then alarm, then something approaching panic as her brain tried to process what she was witnessing.
Noah stood there between her and the approaching mist. He had absolutely no explanation that would make this make sense.
