"Don't throw it that way," Tarin said. "You're aiming like you want it to miss."
Caelan laughed and threw it anyway.
The stick bounced once on the packed dirt, veered politely to the left, and missed the stump by a margin that suggested the stump had moved out of the way at the last second.
Mireth groaned theatrically. "That's the third time. If you break my good stick, I'm making you carve me another."
"It's not a good stick," Caelan said. "It's crooked."
"It was straight when I found it," Mireth snapped. "The world did that, not me."
Brannik, seated on the low stone wall and sharpening a knife with slow, meditative strokes, snorted. "That stick was crooked before you picked it up."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"How?"
"I was there."
"You're always there," Tarin said. "That doesn't make you useful."
Brannik didn't look up. "It usually does."
Elowen sat slightly apart, legs folded, ledger abandoned beside her. She watched the exchange with the calm interest of someone observing weather patterns she had already written down.
"You're all avoiding the real problem," she said.
Tarin squinted at her. "Which is?"
"Caelan isn't paying attention."
They all turned.
Caelan blinked. "I am."
"You're looking past us," Mireth said.
"I'm looking at you," Caelan replied, then hesitated. "Mostly."
"That's worse," Tarin said. "That means you're thinking."
Caelan opened his mouth to argue. Closed it again.
He hadn't noticed how often his eyes drifted—not toward the yard, or the fields, but the dark line of trees beyond the fog-softened distance.
He glanced again before he could stop himself.
"There," Mireth said triumphantly. "You did it again."
"Did what?"
"That," Elowen said gently. "You keep checking the forest like it's about to walk over here."
"It's not," Tarin said. "I'd hear it."
Brannik stopped sharpening.
That alone earned attention.
He looked at Caelan carefully. "Something bothering you?"
Caelan hesitated.
The easy answer was ready. The correct one was… not shaped yet.
"I don't know," he said finally. "It's just… loud."
They stared.
"The forest?" Mireth asked.
"No," Caelan said. "Yes. Maybe. Not loud like noise. Loud like when you're trying to think and someone keeps standing too close."
Tarin grimaced. "I hate when people do that."
Elowen tilted her head. "That's an unusual complaint about trees."
"I know."
Silence followed.
A bird called once.
Then apparently reconsidered.
Mireth clapped her hands. "Right. New plan. Creek. Stones. Tarin owes me a rematch."
"I won that."
"You cheated."
"I used skill."
"You bent the rules."
"The rules were suggestions."
Caelan laughed, easier now. The sky above him felt wide. The tightness in his chest loosened the moment he stepped away from the house.
"Creek sounds good," he said. "If we don't mind getting wet."
"I always mind," Tarin said. "I just do it anyway."
They set off, boots crunching pebbles, conversation tumbling back into familiar grooves.
"You ever think about leaving?" Tarin asked suddenly.
Mireth blinked. "That was abrupt."
"Just asking."
Elowen considered. "Sometimes. Mostly during inventory."
Brannik shook his head. "Running doesn't fix rot."
"I didn't say running," Tarin said. "I said leaving."
Caelan listened, half-present. The farther they walked, the easier breathing became. The air cooled. The scent of damp earth grew stronger.
He glanced toward the deeper woods again.
Brannik noticed. "You sure you're all right?"
"Yeah," Caelan said. "Better, actually."
Mireth smiled. "See? You just needed us."
"Maybe."
The forest waited.
The creek greeted them with the sound of steady movement and quiet persistence—water doing what water had always done, and doing it well.
Tarin dropped his pack. "Same rules. Three throws. Closest wins."
"You changed the rules last time," Mireth said.
"I refined them."
"That's cheating."
"That's progress."
Elowen sat and pulled off her boots. "I'll keep score."
Brannik tested the current. "Higher than usual."
Caelan knelt and chose stones by feel. Smooth. Flat.
The pressure inside him felt… loose.
Responsive.
"All right," Tarin said. "Observe."
His stone skipped twice and sank well short.
Mireth laughed. "Refined."
Caelan tossed his stone casually.
It skipped.
Once. Twice. Three times.
It nudged the far rock.
Silence.
Elowen blinked. "Lucky."
"Was it?" Caelan said quietly.
"Again," Mireth said.
"No way," Tarin said. "Twice is suspicious."
Caelan chose a heavier stone.
Mid-flight, it clipped a branch.
The branch flexed.
The stone skipped perfectly.
Four times.
And settled on the rock.
Brannik straightened. "Huh."
"That branch wasn't there," Tarin muttered.
"It was," Mireth said. "You don't look up."
Caelan felt it then—not power, not thrill.
Agreement.
They changed games.
Dice rolled.
They settled how they should not have.
Knives thrown.
Wood split helpfully.
"That log's rotted," Tarin said.
Brannik shook his head. "Not like that."
Caelan's hand tingled faintly.
Reality was… leaning.
"Do it again," Mireth said.
Caelan hesitated.
"I think I'm done."
"So it is cheating," Tarin said smugly.
Caelan smiled faintly, eyes drifting again toward the trees.
The air there felt thicker now.
Expectant.
The whisper came quietly.
Not sound.
Direction.
"…You hear that?" Caelan asked.
"Hear what?" Mireth said.
"Never mind."
Because it wasn't sound.
It was pull.
Stay here, he told himself.
The whisper waited.
He looked.
There.
A fallen oak branch, pale, lifted just enough from the ground.
Ordinary.
Perfect.
That, something inside him said.
That is yours.
"I'm going to grab that," he said.
"Now?" Mireth asked.
"It's straight," Caelan said weakly.
"So are half the trees," Tarin replied.
Brannik watched carefully.
Caelan stepped off the path.
The forest adjusted.
When he grasped the branch—
Relief.
Deep. Immediate.
Right.
He lifted it.
The forest exhaled.
"Find something good?" Mireth called.
"Yeah," Caelan said. "I did."
They joked.
They teased.
They watched.
Brannik said nothing.
And deep in the Greenwake, something ancient and injured took careful note.
The forest had found what it needed.
And Caelan, holding a stick and wondering why the world suddenly made sense, had no idea what he had just agreed to.
__________
Old Harrow did not notice the forest had changed.
This was not because it hadn't.
It very much had.
But Harrow had built a long and respectable life around not noticing things that other people found alarming. Sounds others called whispers were, to him, simply thoughts that had lost their manners. Shapes that moved when no one else saw them were just the forest stretching, which it had every right to do at its age.
He had come to the Greenwake young—young enough that no one quite remembered why he stayed, only that he never left. Some said grief. Others said debt. Most agreed that Harrow had already been half-mad when the trees finally decided they liked him.
His shelter lay where the paths thinned and the forest forgot to post warnings.
It was a lean-to of bark and scavenged timber, patched so many times that no original piece remained. Smoke-blackened stones circled an old fire pit. Bones hung drying from careful knots—rabbit, bird, the occasional deer—arranged with a tidiness no one else would have bothered with.
Harrow knew the forest.
Not the way hunters did, with tracks and seasons and sensible boundaries. He knew it the way one knows an argument that never quite ends—by rhythm, by repetition, by what always came back even when you were sure you'd settled it.
So when the pestilence reached his part of the Greenwake, it did not announce itself.
It simply fit.
The moss thickened first.
Harrow noticed that.
He prodded it with a stick. The moss yielded, then slowly rose back into shape, leaving a faint shimmer on the wood before sinking into it.
"Too soft," Harrow muttered. "Too wet."
He sniffed it.
"Still moss," he decided.
Harrow had always trusted his nose.
The animals changed next.
A fox he'd known for years—mangy, clever, missing half an ear—failed to flee when Harrow approached. It sat instead, head tilted, eyes reflecting far more light than the gloom justified.
"Lost your fear, have you?" Harrow asked.
The fox did not blink.
It took a step closer.
Harrow waved it off, uneasy. "Go on. No scraps today."
The fox obeyed.
But it did not leave.
It lingered at the edge of Harrow's vision for hours, pacing slow circles that never quite crossed into his camp. When it finally vanished, Harrow felt—not relief—but absence.
That bothered him.
The air grew heavier over the following days. Breathing felt like pulling damp cloth through his lungs. His joints ached in ways weather could not explain. Harrow stayed anyway.
He always did.
On the seventh morning, Harrow woke coughing.
Something wet coated his tongue. He spat.
Dark flecks soaked into the dirt and vanished far too quickly.
"That's new," he rasped.
He rose slowly, leaning on his staff—a crooked thing he'd cut years ago because it felt right, though he could no longer remember why. The wood felt warm beneath his palm.
Almost companionable.
The forest leaned toward him.
Harrow staggered. Roots pressed up beneath his boots, steadying him.
"That's… kind," he whispered, baffled.
Pain followed.
Not sharp.
Not cruel.
Expansive.
It bloomed in his chest like a breath held too long and spread outward, joints popping wetly as ligaments thickened and tightened with bureaucratic enthusiasm.
Harrow screamed.
The forest absorbed it.
Skin darkened in patches. Veins stood out like vines beneath bark. Fingers stiffened, nails lengthening into horn-like ridges. His vision flooded with too much clarity until the world fractured into layers of scent and growth and motion.
He collapsed to his knees.
The ground rose to meet him.
Roots pierced cloth, then skin—not tearing, but merging. Sensation rewrote itself. Pain dulled into purpose. Thoughts scattered. Memories thinned.
The pestilence worked patiently.
It did not kill Harrow.
It kept him.
By dusk, nothing recognizably human remained.
A thick-limbed thing knelt there, fused to the forest floor, chest rising with a breath that carried spores instead of air. Its face smoothed into something mask-like, features redistributed for better function. Eyes watched the forest, unblinking and aware.
Where Harrow had once spoken, this thing listened.
The Greenwake adjusted.
The pestilence learned.
It was satisfied.
For now.
A week passed.
Nothing happened.
That, more than anything else, unsettled Rowan Hale.
The days unfolded normally. Chores done. Fences mended. Stores checked twice because that was how you stayed alive. Caelan rose early, worked steadily, laughed when appropriate, slept when tired.
And yet.
Rowan noticed the small things.
The south fence—old, warped, unreliable—had straightened after Caelan replaced a single post that should not have carried the load it now bore. Rowan tested it with his shoulder.
It held.
"Huh," Rowan said.
The creek behaved itself. Water spread and then obligingly found a better channel. Fields dried faster than expected.
Helpful.
Explainable.
Deeply suspicious.
Rowan said nothing.
Caelan seemed calmer outdoors. The staff never left his reach now.
"You don't need that for splitting kindling," Rowan said once.
"I know."
"Then why carry it?"
Caelan frowned. "Feels wrong not to."
Rowan accepted that. He had learned long ago that some truths arrived before explanations.
Odd moments accumulated.
A cracked axle held just long enough to prevent injury. A loose stone settled into place under Caelan's palm.
Animals favored him.
"Something about you," Mireth said once. "You smell like rain."
Caelan denied it.
Elowen wrote more. Tarin complained about unfair games. Brannik watched.
Rowan felt it most in the evenings.
Caelan sat outside longer, staff across his knees, eyes attentive rather than restless.
"You all right?" Rowan asked.
"Better," Caelan said.
"Things fit," he added. "Like setting a beam straight."
Rowan smiled faintly. "You always did like bad metaphors."
They sat in silence.
The forest watched.
And far away, the Greenwake bore a wound that had learned to think.
It felt the tension shift.
Not alarm.
Not urgency.
But recognition.
And the world—quietly, methodically—prepared for what happens when balance is restored in one place and demanded in another.
__________
Elaria Thornewin did not pace.
Pacing was what people did when they wished to advertise distress. It was movement with an audience in mind. It invited concern, interruption, and—worst of all—helpful senior academics.
Instead, Elaria sat very still at her desk in the Lyceum's eastern study wing, spine straight, hands folded atop a neat stack of copied calibration sheets she had memorized three days ago and was now pretending to reread.
The expedition had departed four days earlier.
A small one. Quiet. Observers only, as Arch-Rector Korth had insisted in the firm tone he used when he knew he was making a mistake but wanted it to be a controlled one. Two senior adjuncts, a field scrivener, minimal escort.
Enough authority to be believed.
Not enough presence to be noticed.
Not enough, Elaria thought grimly.
The pressure had not eased.
It had grown.
Not like pain. Not like fear. It was more like a musical string being tightened one careful turn at a time—never snapping, never quite settling, humming insistently whether you wanted to hear it or not. She felt it when she woke. When she ate. When she attempted harmonic exercises that now stubbornly refused to harmonize with anything at all.
The far corner of the kingdom was pressing back.
Elaria closed her eyes.
She did not cast. She did not sense in any officially sanctioned manner. That would have required forms.
She simply listened.
The Lyceum hummed around her, wards layered and interlocked, a triumph of managed resonance and committee-approved safety margins. It felt like a very old building politely clearing its throat.
That was comforting.
Beyond it—
Something leaned.
And something else answered.
Elaria's eyes snapped open.
That was new.
Not escalation. Not intensification.
A second presence.
Faint, yes—but unmistakably distinct. Where the wrongness felt heavy and pooled, this felt anchored. Where the corruption distorted, this… stood.
It did not push.
It did not intrude.
It simply existed, stubbornly and without apology.
Elaria pressed her palms flat against the desk, grounding herself. Slowly, carefully, she reached again.
The sensation remained.
Distant. Rural. Forest-bound.
Alive.
Not a spell. Not a structure. Not even magic in any form the Lyceum liked to admit existed.
A presence.
Her heart began to race—not with fear, but with the sort of baffled fascination that usually preceded disciplinary action. She had felt surges before. Failed rituals. Emotional casting. Talents flaring under stress.
This was none of those.
This felt… inhabited.
Elaria withdrew at once, awareness snapping back into the safe, predictable hum of the Lyceum's wards. The sensation faded—not vanished, but retreating politely, as if respecting a boundary she had not known she could set.
She stared at her hands.
They were steady. No tremor. No visible sign of strain.
Good, she told herself. No one sees.
That was the danger.
Not that she felt it—but that she felt it as clearly as the elders did.
Sometimes more clearly.
Students were not supposed to match Arch-Rectors in attunement. They were not supposed to sense regional alignments without amplification arrays and at least three people to sign off on it.
When they did, it was called imagination.
Corrected.
So Elaria had learned to be quiet.
She rose and crossed the study, fingertips brushing the stone wall as she passed. The pressure shifted in response, like a taut line acknowledging a careful adjustment.
Elaria stopped walking.
The distant presence responded.
Not consciously. Not deliberately.
But the way two tuned strings recognized one another without ever touching.
"That's impossible," she whispered.
Which was academic shorthand for I am about to be very busy.
She resumed walking, pulse quickening now. The far corner of the kingdom was no longer just wrong—it had depth. Counterpoint. Something that made the strain feel contested rather than collapsing.
She reached the tall window overlooking Calthyre's inner terraces. Below, students crossed courtyards laughing, arguing, secure in the belief that the world behaved according to lecture notes.
She envied them deeply.
This isn't collapse, she realized. It's alignment under stress.
And somewhere within that stress was a fixed point she could not classify.
The expedition should have reported by now.
Silence, by itself, meant nothing. The Greenwake was infamous for eating messages, spells, and occasionally messengers.
But the resonance had changed.
Where once it had been diffuse and patient, now it carried structure. Layers. Interference resolving not into chaos—but coherence.
Two somethings.
One wrong.
One… right, in a way she had no vocabulary for.
Elaria turned sharply and headed for the restricted stacks.
She did not need permission. She had earned trust through perfect compliance, impeccable results, and never being visibly troublesome.
Inside, she pulled a thin folio from a sealed shelf.
Quiet anomalies.
Events dismissed as coincidence.
Beneficial outcomes.
No initial casualties.
Then—later—escalation.
And in two obscure cases: references to a counter-presence.
Poorly described. Often footnoted. Usually explained away.
Elaria closed the folio.
"I told you," she whispered—not to the elders, not to the Lyceum.
To the balance far away.
Sending observers had been right.
But it would not be enough.
Whatever stood in the Greenwake was not a mage.
Not a caster.
Not magic as doctrine understood it.
And yet she could feel it—steady against the corruption—like a hand braced against a failing beam.
The pressure tightened again, brushing pain.
Elaria breathed slowly, smoothing the resonance so no one nearby would feel the spike.
She could not act openly.
But she could prepare.
And she could wait.
They should not have been there.
Elowen realized it first, because Elowen noticed patterns, and the pattern had just become wrong. The forest floor dipped too sharply. The undergrowth thickened into a sound-eating wall of fern and bramble.
"Cael," she whispered. "This isn't the usual trail."
"It bends back," Tarin said. "I've been here."
Brannik had already gone still.
Too late.
The bear rose from behind the fallen log with the sound of the earth deciding to stand up.
She was enormous.
Behind her: cubs.
The forest stopped.
Tarin forgot how to breathe.
Mireth forgot how knives worked.
Elowen forgot how legs functioned.
Brannik shifted forward slightly. "I can distract—"
"She'll kill," Mireth whispered.
Caelan felt it too—but differently.
The staff in his hand felt warm.
The forest felt… present.
He moved.
Down.
Knee to ground.
The sound was impossibly loud.
"Caelan," Elowen breathed.
He placed his hand on the earth.
The forest answered.
The clearing widened—not physically, but socially.
"I see you," Caelan said.
The bear listened.
"You're not wrong," he continued. "This place is yours."
The cubs shifted.
The bear backed away.
Choosing.
When silence returned, it arrived slowly.
Mireth sat down hard. Tarin stared. Elowen laughed once and stopped herself.
Brannik exhaled. "That," he said, "was not luck."
"I just… made room," Caelan said.
Mireth looked at him. "You talked to a bear."
"No," Brannik corrected. "He talked to the forest."
__________
And far away, Elaria Thornewin stiffened as the pressure eased—just slightly.
Someone had answered back.
And that, she knew, was going to require many meetings.