The Unmapped Reach did not announce its rules. It simply enforced them.
By the second day the first apex predator found them. A long-limbed stalker with bone-white plates and too many joints. It came from downwind, silent until the final leap. Aiden did not meet it head-on. He let the muted incubus signature bleed out in a thin, deliberate thread, just enough to pull the creature's attention into a narrow defile of broken roots. When it committed, the ordered power locked its limbs mid-strike. He broke the neck with one clean motion, then fed. Vitality settled into him in a slow, dense tide. The body was left for the forest.
Ressa watched without speaking.
