Thirty One

The sun was barely peeking through the trees, and the air had that early morning chill when I first noticed something was wrong. Arthur and I had been on the move for days now, trying to stay ahead of whatever Vladimir had sent after us. But the problem was, no matter how far we went or how careful we were, they always seemed to be one step behind. It was like they could smell us, sense our every move.

We didn’t speak about it much, but the tension was there, hanging heavy in the air between us. Arthur was always on edge, his hand never straying far from the hilt of his knife. And me? I felt like I was constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to jump out of the shadows.

That morning, we were walking through a dense part of the forest. The trees were thick here, their branches so close together that it felt like the sunlight was struggling to get through. Every sound seemed amplified—the crunch of leaves under our boots, the rustle of the wind through the trees. My se