It had been a long time since Imua had seen a forest as dense as this, for 5 months they had been fleeing south from Detroit. Gila chose to stay to speak with the God of that lake and Imua wasn't about to stop her...
All that work... the Bandits, the long days of travel, helping across the Lake, for nothing. Just another god, in another pile of plants... She knew she was stronger than she was after Paradise, but she also knew she was not strong enough to confront another god. The god allowed them to leave, for whatever reason she was not sure of.

Forl was particularly broken by it, he's the one who woke her and Jat to the threat, but she knows he really wanted to settle down, start anew... Yet there they were, in the late summer, marching through some unknown lands far to the south. Where the air has gotten hotter and wetter. He still tries to do his best every day, but she can tell his legs are weary. Jats likewise clearly tired, quieter than usual. She's even struggling to push forward.

Now here she is, on some river rock... The place looks nice to live in but who knows what'll be here to ruin it for them if they try and live here? Ancient gods? Teal Steels? Pillaging Bandits?.. It's just better to keep moving.

They were always just hikers, always passing through, that's all they'll ever be.

It's safer that way.

So this is kinda a sad ending in a less violent way than any of the other ones seen in A Different Trail

It's not oppressive like the sivilão, existentially horrific like Paradise, or brutal and violent like the Bandits, but I think its more the sadness of the folks losing their drive and goals.

For 6 chapters, close to a year of their lives and Imuas 2nd year in Suyu had been spent pushing East, and then pushing towards the Great Lake and getting the good will of the folks there to move in. In the story they got very close to abandoning all that due to their history with those "Affairs of Wounded Gods". But Imua was able to keep it together in a way that Forl and Jat weren't able to. Albeit with understandable anger. If not for that this could have very well been the main pack. Just the three of them, running and giving up on ever finding a place to start anew, to just keep on the move no matter what as by this point for Forl, Imua, and Jat, all they have known and all this has confirmed is that there is no safe enough place to settle.

Its the story where their traumas win out which I think makes it a rather depressing ending. They don't suffer any violence, enslavement, or identity death here. But they do lose their hope for a better life.