Dog's Return Home

 Dog leaves Safeton behind him, taking the old coastal road west before cutting inland toward the Gnarley. With Lady Morwen Ellisar riding at his side, they try to leave the pain behind them. Pain like this doesn't fade easily. 

One morning after a couple of hours on the road, while the dew still clung to grass, they saw  the trees that stand ever vigilant. They entered the wood with a relief washing over them, the end to the nightmare, they hoped. The forest closed around them like a held breath — the kind of quiet that only rangers and druids ever really trust. Dog seeks out the shrines of Ehlonna first, making the offerings owed after a season away, kneeling in groves he half-remembers from his training years. He gifts his goddess trophies of foes, natural riches, and blood itself. Tithing is expected, the forest doesn't forgive neglect, and Dog knows it. 

Unburdened by the turmoil of the Rod — that weight stays behind in Safeton with Slash — he moves deftly through the trees, more gracefully than he has in months. Still the memory of the despair and remorse in Drachensgrab trails him like a shadow.

From there Dog leads Lady Morwen, following paths unseen by eyes not trained, toward Otis's camp — his ranger-knight.

This is the man who first shaped him into what he is. The reunion is part homecoming, part debriefing: Dog lays out everything from the Slave Lords' collapse, the deaths of Markessa and Icar, and finally, the four companions lost in the chapter's final disaster. Otis listens the way rangers listen — without interruption, weighing consequence over sentiment. Training resumes alongside the talk, old forms and forest-craft drilled back into muscle memory. Meanwhile, Morwen recovers in the quiet of a place that, for once, isn't trying to kill either of them. Whatever comes next — giants, the Rod's still-missing pieces, Safeton's slow-burning slaver rot — Dog means to face it a step sharper than he left.

Written by Angelo Ciriaco and Ryan Sylvia