Chapter Eighteen

Meanwhile, in the midst of the Dark Zone, a single figure was riding by horse through the trees in the faint morning light. The fog, though still very heavy, was slightly blocked by the woods of the mountains, and so even just after dawn, it was quite dark at ground level.

The rider traveled swiftly, zigzagging through the woods along a narrow dirt trail. He was a young man, in his early twenties, and he was one of the people of the valley of Ravenna. He was wearing a ragged, leather chest plate, on which he carried a large knife in a holster and a wooden longbow on his back. There was also a harness attached to the horse. One side of it held a quiver full of arrows and a stone sword in a scabbard on the other side. The man wore a brown hood over his head, under which his face showed an expression of ceaseless hate and resent as well as a few old battle scars.