The afternoon was colder than the morning.
Kaiden pulled up the Association's tactical overlay on his wrist artifact. The holographic map flickered to life above his forearm, a topographical spread of the northern range dotted with colored markers. Red for confirmed hostile. Yellow for unconfirmed. Grey for stale data, positions logged more than an hour ago that may have shifted since.
The map wasn't perfect. The Association's monitoring teams updated positions based on drone sweeps and veteran reports, but the deep northern zones had gaps.
Monsters migrated. Territories shifted. A marker that showed a lone creature resting in a basin could be a pack of six by the time you arrived.
Better than nothing.
Kaiden studied the spread while his girls walked beside him. Luna kept pace on his left, eyes darting between the terrain ahead and the hologram.
What he was looking for was obvious enough that no one asked.
