Kael did not move for several breaths after the river returned to normal.
The world sounded alive again—wind through leaves, insects hidden in brush, the distant cry of something winged far above. It all felt… rehearsed. As if the silence had only stepped aside, not disappeared.
He turned away from the river and began walking.
The path through the forest was narrow and uneven, worn down by years of foot traffic that had stopped too suddenly to be natural. Broken branches lay half-rotted on the ground, and the earth carried faint impressions of old tracks—boots, carts, claws he couldn't immediately place.
Whatever had passed through here had not been alone.
Kael slowed, crouching near one of the impressions. Two toes. Wide heel. Heavy. It pressed deeper into the soil than its size should have allowed.
"Not human," he muttered.
And not recent.
That troubled him more.
Events like the one at the river didn't vanish quietly. They left residue. Distortion didn't simply dissolve—it lingered, seeped into the ground, warped patterns that living things depended on. The fact that this place had gone silent at all meant the imbalance had reached a threshold.
Something had crossed it.
Kael rose and continued forward.
As the forest thinned, he caught sight of stone ahead. Ruins, partially collapsed and swallowed by moss, emerged from the trees like bones left too long in the open. Whatever this structure had been—a watch post, a shrine, a settlement—it had been abandoned in haste.
He stepped through a broken archway.
The air inside felt different. Not wrong like the river—but strained. As if the space was holding its breath.
Kael's senses shifted inward.
Pressure gathered along his skin, subtle but unmistakable. He adjusted his breathing automatically, letting it flow low and steady, easing the tension before it could root itself deeper.
That was when he saw the mark.
Carved into the stone floor at the center of the ruins was a circular indentation, its edges scorched and cracked. Not burned. Compressed. The stone had been forced inward by something heavy—something that didn't care about resistance.
Kael knelt.
This wasn't an attack. It was an arrival.
The implications settled slowly.
If something powerful enough to distort space had entered this world—and left without confrontation—then either it had accomplished its purpose… or it had been interrupted.
Neither outcome sat well.
A faint sound reached his ears then. Not footsteps. Not breathing.
A hum.
Low. Almost imperceptible.
Kael's head snapped up.
The sound wasn't coming from the ruins.
It was coming from him.
His chest tightened slightly as he recognized the sensation. Not pain. Not fear.
Resonance.
Whatever had brushed against the world at the river had left something behind. And for reasons he didn't yet understand, it was reacting to him.
Kael stood slowly.
"This is getting troublesome," he said under his breath.
He had avoided attention for a reason. Kept his movements small. His presence quiet. The world tolerated anomalies only when they stayed unnoticed.
But something had noticed him first.
Kael looked toward the distant horizon, where the forest gave way to open land and, beyond that, roads that led to places where people gathered, measured strength, named power, and enforced rules.
If this imbalance spread—
No. That thought could wait.
For now, there was only one certainty.
Staying here would invite answers he wasn't ready to face.
Kael turned his back on the ruins and started walking toward civilization.
Behind him, unseen, the scorched circle in the stone cracked just a little more.