Dry Scar opened wider with every step.
From the rise where the truck had left them, the hunting grounds had looked empty. Once Neo and Alice walked into it, the place changed shape. Distance stopped feeling clean. Dunes rose where the land had looked flat. Half-buried stone broke the sand at odd angles, like old bones pushing up through skin. The trees were worse up close. Their trunks climbed high into the pale sky, stripped bare, dark in some places, white in others, each one standing alone with enough space around it to feel deliberate.
Wind moved through the ground in long dry breaths.
Sand scratched over stone. Nothing else.
Neo walked a few paces ahead at first, then slowed so Alice could come level with him. He had one hand in his pocket, shoulders loose, face as unreadable as always.
"This place looks like a bad memory," he said.
Alice kept her attention on the dunes ahead. "It's wide."
"That's what bothers you?"
"Yes."
