The bickering slowly, as they walked, tapered off.
Nyx's laughter slowly softened into breathy chuckles. Luna's indignant muttering lost its heat, sparks fading back into a disciplined hum beneath her skin. Even Calypso's idle humming grew quieter, her steps aligning unconsciously with the group's pace. Without anyone needing to say it out loud, the shift began the moment the terrain changed.
The camp's outer perimeter loomed ahead.
Rune decorated barricades gave way to scorched stone and fractured earth, the ground pitted with old impact craters and claw marks that no amount of cleanup ever quite erased. The ambient mana thickened, no longer playful or reactive, but heavy and directional, flowing in slow currents that only existed where monsters had passed through recently.
