The fire had sunk to a low red bowl. Mist clung to the roots, and the river made its soft night sound, like someone breathing in sleep. Rowan sat with his back to a log, eyes heavy but not closing. Ashwyn was a dark shape beyond the coals, still as a stump. Brennar scrubbed his whetstone down the axe edge in slow, even strokes. Ari checked her bowstring by touch. Nyx paced the edge of the light where shadow began.
Rowan was watching the sparks when Nyx stopped. Her head tilted, eyes fixed on a strip of black between two birches.
"I see eyes," she said—quiet, flat.
Ari lifted her bow without thinking. Brennar stood.
The eyes blinked once. Silver. Low. Then a body slid out of the dark, smooth as poured ink—a panther, bigger than any cat Rowan had seen, the kind hunters told stories about and swore weren't real. It did not growl. It launched itself straight at Nyx.
Ari's fingers were faster than thought. Her arrow leapt from the string, straight and sure. Rowan saw the shaft streak for the panther's ribs—
—and pass through nothing.
The cat dissolved into mist a finger's width before the arrow touched it. The shaft hissed through empty air and clattered off a root. The panther dropped back into shape on the ground without a sound, landing light, tail flicking, and began to circle Nyx, slow and careful.
Ari had already nocked another arrow. "Down!"
"—No!" Ashwyn's shout cracked like a branch. He stepped forward, shocked for the first time Rowan had ever seen him. "Stop! That isn't a beast. It's a spirit. The forest itself." His eyes were wide, gold flecks bright. "This is her trial. It is testing her—but it is hers alone."
Ari froze, bow half-drawn. Brennar swore under his breath and forced his hands open, one finger at a time.
Nyx slid one foot back and lowered her shoulders. Her blades came up, easy in her hands. She watched the panther watch her.
"About time," she said, and stepped toward it.
The cat's ears flattened. It glided left. Nyx matched. It darted right. She flowed with it, a shadow keeping pace with a darker shadow. They made three slow turns, circling, testing. Rowan held his breath and felt foolish for it; the air around them had thinned, like the forest leaned in to see.
The panther feinted and came in low, claws flashing. Nyx jumped, rolled, and cut a quick X where its chest would have been if the world were slower. Shadow spilled from the cuts instead of blood and knitted closed at once. The cat's eyes went brighter. It leapt again.
Nyx vanished.
Rowan blinked and lost her. For a heartbeat he saw only the silver coins of the cat's eyes moving too fast to track; then Nyx slid out of the night behind it, blade scraping a line along its flank. It turned on a dime and met her, paw like a hammer, and she bent under it, soft as rope, snapping back up with a slash that would have opened anything that bled. The cat moved as if it had been waiting there.
They were not trying to kill each other. That was the strangest part. They moved like two knife dancers learning each other's steps—strike, slip, test, answer. The panther lunged high and passed through Nyx's shoulder with a rush of cold that made Rowan's teeth ache. Nyx went low, cutting at the air where its leg would land, and the leg landed somewhere else.
Then it stopped.
The cat stood over her, chest rising, jaws open, and Nyx stood under it, blades down. She did not flinch. She didn't even blink.
"Do it," she whispered, though Rowan didn't know to whom.
The panther's shape loosened. It unraveled into smoke edged with silver, and the smoke poured into Nyx like breath. It wrapped her shoulders. It slid down her arms. It sank into her chest. For a moment her eyes burned pale, like frost under moonlight. Then the glow dimmed, and the night was only night again.
Nyx lowered her knives and stood very still. She tilted her head as if someone had spoken far away. Then she laughed once, a small sharp sound.
"The shadows… talk to me now," she said.
Rowan swallowed. "Talk how?"
"I can feel everything." She swept her gaze along the treeline. "Wings in the dark. A mouse under that log. The beetles in the grass. Even the trees—" her mouth tugged into a smirk "—they breathe. They sway. I can hear the rhythm of it. The forest is louder than you think. And now… I hear all of it."
No one spoke. The fire popped. Somewhere a night bird gave a soft, doubtful note and went quiet again.
Brennar set his axe down harder than he meant to. "Hnh," he said, and nothing more.
Ari let out the breath she'd been holding and lowered her bow. She looked at Ashwyn.
He nodded, still a little shaken. "The spirits choose their moments," he said. "And their people."
Nyx sat with her back to a root, near the edge of the light, as if the dark were a cloak she had finally earned. Rowan could not stop glancing at her. She wasn't different to look at—same knives, same small, hard smile—but the air near her felt thinner, tighter. Like the night had moved closer to listen.
Sleep did not come easy. When it came, it came in pieces.
Dawn dragged pale light between the branches. Mist turned the river to a sheet of dull metal. Brennar stirred the coals. Lyra's quiet coughs counted the morning. Ari stretched the sleep from her fingers and strung her bow.
A shadow crossed the smoke.
They all looked up at once. A hawk circled overhead, wings flashing as they caught the first thin sun. It dipped, rose, dipped again, then cried—a clean, sharp sound that made Rowan's chest lift before he could stop it.
Ari's hand went to her bow without thought. She stepped into the open and faced the bird.
Ashwyn's mouth softened. His voice was low and sure. "It seems the spirits are on our side," he said. "This one is for her."
Rowan glanced at him. No urgency now. No fear. Only a kind of quiet respect that made Rowan stand straighter.
The hawk folded its wings and dropped. It wasn't an attack. It was a test of steady hands and steady breath. Ari drew, set, and held. For a heartbeat, the world shrank to the line between her eye and the bird.
She loosed.
The arrow flashed, swift and clean. The hawk broke into a spill of gold before it could touch feather. Light fell like sun through leaves and soaked into Ari's chest. She staggered two steps and caught herself, blinking fast.
"Ari?" Rowan said.
She lifted a hand, not to stop him but to steady herself. Her eyes were not glowing like Nyx's had. They were only bright. Clear.
"I can see," she whispered. "Gods, I can see it. The ridge… the bend in the river… the split oak two bends back." She turned, looking at things only she could see. "The world from above. If I close my eyes, it keeps flying. It shows me the way."
Ashwyn bowed his head a fraction, as if someone else were present and needed thanks. "The spirits choose well."
Nyx watched Ari with something like interest, but there was a sliver of something else in her look too. Not malice. Not envy. A measuring. Brennar stared a moment, then bent over the coals and poked them more than they needed poking.
Rowan smiled despite himself. "Does it… last?"
Ari blinked and lowered her hand. "It fades unless I call it," she said. "But it's there. Waiting."
Keen, Rowan thought. Clean. He felt the river at his hip give one slow push against the skin of the waterskin, as if to say, I'm here too. He pressed his palm to it and wished, suddenly and hard, that it would speak as clearly as hawks and panthers.
They ate a little, because morning asked for it, and because the wolf was not here with a deer today. Bread, tough and plain. A strip of meat left from last night. Lyra moved among them, checking throats and eyes, giving Brennar a sharp-smelling leaf to chew "for the cough you won't admit you have." He chewed it and made a face and chewed it anyway.
When the bowls were clean and the fire almost, Brennar picked up his axe and the whetstone again. The rasp of stone on steel sounded louder than it should.
"Guess the forest forgot about axes," he said, not looking up.
Ari's head turned. "Brennar—"
He lifted a hand. "Save it. Spirits make their choices. Good for them." He put the stone to the blade again, slow and even. "I'll stick to mine."
Ashwyn watched him a long moment. "Every spirit chooses its time," he said, voice even. "Even stone waits before it breaks into river."
Brennar grunted, which could have meant anything. Rowan saw the set of his jaw and the careful calm of his hands and knew: it wasn't anger. It was something softer that Brennar didn't have names for. He looked big and unshakable as always. He also looked alone in a way Rowan hadn't seen before.
Rowan swallowed and shifted closer, just a little, so their shoulders almost touched. He didn't say anything. Brennar didn't either. The space between them changed.
Nyx rose without a word and walked the shadow edge, testing the new pull of it, disappearing and appearing like stepping over a line only she could see. Ari shaded her eyes and described a pale smear of dust in the far south that no one else could make out. "Wheels," she said. "Heavy ones." The word made the camp go quiet.
Ashwyn stood and lifted his staff. The trees seemed to lean to hear. "Then we will follow," he said. "But we do it with open eyes."
Rowan tightened the strap on his waterskin. He felt small again, for a moment. Small, and a little afraid that when the spirits came to test, they would pass him by. He didn't say it. He only breathed with the river until his chest stopped feeling tight.
They stamped out the last glow and scattered the ash, so no one would know they had been there. When they stepped onto the path, the forest did not open for them, not this time. It simply did not stand in their way.
A hawk cried once, high and clean. Somewhere, far to the south, dust lifted in a thin line. Nyx glanced at it and then at Rowan, and her mouth curled.
"The shadows are louder on that road," she said. "I can hear them from here."
Rowan nodded, though the only thing he heard was his own blood. "Then let's go where they're loud."
Brennar hefted his axe. Ari eased an arrow back into her quiver and touched the bow like a promise. Lyra tied her pack tight and checked everyone's feet, because blisters start wars no one wants. Ashwyn took the first step and the ground accepted it.
They went south, toward dust and wheels and whatever waited. The spirits had spoken. Whether they were ready or not, the forest was on their side. For now.