The fields near Emberfen's edge were different.
Too different.
Kael stood at the edge of a dirt path that should have led to more farmland. Instead, it ended in twisted brush and a crooked wooden fence wrapped in rusted talismans.
Old protection glyphs.
Worn.
Cracked.
And scorched from the inside.
Sariel stopped beside him.
"Marshal Herin said this path was sealed."
Kael nodded. "I noticed."
Mero crouched near one of the talismans.
"These aren't just wards. Someone tried to trap something in here."
"Or out," Vetch muttered.
He was a few paces away, kneeling low, running fingers across the soil.
"The weeds here don't grow toward the sun," he said softly. "They grow away from the center."
Kael followed his line of sight.
A clearing.
Dark. Still. Silent.
No birds.
No wind.
No rot.
Just stillness that pressed at the edges of his thoughts.
They didn't enter.
Not yet.
Herin hadn't approved it. But no one here was stopping them either.
That said more than silence ever could.
Back in the village, Kael pulled Mother Kethel aside.
"Why is that field sealed?"
She looked at him.
Long.
Then said, "Because it listened."
Kael frowned. "What?"
She tapped her head, then her chest.
"Most plants take sun and water. Grow or die. But that field… it listens. It waited. It changed."
He said nothing.
Neither did she.
Just walked away.
That night, Sariel argued with Mero.
"Waiting for orders won't solve this," she said. "Something's festering out there."
"We're not here to solve it," Mero snapped. "We're here to report it."
"You afraid?" Vetch asked quietly.
Mero turned on him. "I'm not stupid."
Kael watched them.
Didn't speak.
Not yet.
Later, while the others slept, Kael sat beneath the loft window, bottle in hand.
Still sealed.
Still cold.
But when he turned it toward the direction of the field—
It pulsed.
Once.
Then again.
Faster.
Like something beneath that earth remembered it.
Or recognized it.
Or wanted it back.
He rewrapped the bottle.
Slipped it deep into the pouch.
Stared at the moon through the broken slats in the loft roof.
Down below, something shifted in the dirt.
Not loud.
Not fast.
Just a slow unraveling.
A curl of vine pulling free from cracked stone.
And something… deeper… beginning to wake.