The field was exactly where Orin had said it would be.
Three days north of Thornwall, then east through a forest that darkened as he walked, then suddenly—open sky and tall grass and a single figure standing motionless at the center.
Doran stopped at the tree line and watched.
She was small from this distance. A woman in a grey dress, arms at her sides, face turned away from him. She didn't move. Didn't shift her weight. Didn't do any of the small things living people did without thinking.
She had been standing there for forty years.
Doran walked toward her.
The grass whispered against his legs. The sun was warm on his face. Birds called somewhere behind him. Normal things. Living things.
The woman didn't turn as he approached. Didn't acknowledge him at all until he was close enough to see her face—young, far younger than forty years of standing should have allowed, with eyes that were open but not seeing.
"Morwen?"
Her lips moved. No sound came out at first. Then, barely a whisper:
"You're here."
Doran stopped a few feet away. Close enough to talk. Far enough not to crowd.
"I'm Doran. Orin sent me."
Something flickered in her eyes. Recognition? Memory? It was gone before he could name it.
"Orin," she repeated. "Is he dead?"
"Yes."
A long pause. The wind moved through the grass around them.
"Everyone dies," she said finally. "I've had forty years to watch them. The ones who come to help. The ones who try to free me. They all die eventually." Her eyes found his. "You will too."
"Probably."
"Probably." Something almost like a smile touched her lips. "You're honest. That's new."
Doran looked past her, at the field stretching empty in every direction. "What are you holding?"
Morwen was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was different—heavier, older, full of forty years of solitude.
"Do you know what an Anchor does?"
"Orin told me. You stop things. Movement. Time. Change."
"I stop one thing." She looked down at her feet, at the grass that never grew where she stood. "Forty years ago, something tried to tear its way into this world. Not a demon. Not a god. Something else. Something that doesn't belong anywhere."
Doran felt a chill move through him. "Where did it come from?"
"Below." Her eyes met his. "The same place you went. The same thing that's waiting there."
The story came out in pieces, between long silences.
Morwen had been twenty-three when she found her name. Young, strong, full of purpose. She'd heard about a place where reality was thin—a field where things sometimes bled through from elsewhere. She'd gone to see it for herself.
She found more than she bargained for.
"It was already half-through when I arrived," she said. "A tear in the world, and something pushing from the other side. Not the First Witness—something else. Something that wanted to be."
Doran listened. Witnessed.
"I used my name without thinking. Anchored it. Stopped it mid-movement, mid-emergence, mid-everything." Her voice was flat. "It's been frozen ever since. Half in, half out. Waiting."
"And if you stop anchoring?"
"It finishes coming through." She looked at him. "You felt the First Witness. You know what that kind of existence feels like. Now imagine something that wants to act. To move. To change things."
Doran imagined it. The weight inside him shifted uneasily.
"How long can you hold?"
"Forever. That's what Anchors do." Her voice was tired. "I don't age here. Don't change. Don't live. I just... stand."
"And if someone else takes over?"
Her eyes sharpened. "You offering?"
Doran thought about it.
Forty years of standing in one place. Forty years of holding something back. Forty years of watching others live while you simply... waited.
He thought about the thing beneath the tree. About the Silenced One, still sitting after eight hundred years.
Some weights were heavier than others.
"I'm a Witness," he said. "Not an Anchor. I can't do what you do."
"Then why are you here?"
"To see it." He met her eyes. "To witness what you're holding. So someone finally knows what you've been carrying."
Morwen stared at him. For the first time, something moved in her face—something raw and human and forty years buried.
"No one's ever asked," she whispered. "No one's ever wanted to see."
"I'm asking now."
She showed him how.
"Close your eyes. Reach for the tear. It's right in front of me—you'll feel it."
Doran closed his eyes. The field disappeared. The sun disappeared. There was only darkness and the thread of Morwen's presence beside him.
And ahead, something else.
Cold. Hungry. Patient in a way that felt nothing like the First Witness. Where the thing beneath the tree had been still, this thing was waiting to move. Coiled. Ready. Held back by nothing but Morwen's will.
Doran reached for it the way he reached for witnessed moments.
The moment he touched it, he understood.
This wasn't something that could be witnessed the way he witnessed people. It wasn't a moment—it was a presence. A consciousness that predated this world but wanted desperately to enter it.
It felt him reaching.
For an instant, it turned its attention toward him.
Doran saw—
He came back gasping, on his knees in the grass.
Morwen hadn't moved. Couldn't move. But her eyes were on him, wide with something like hope.
"You saw it."
Doran nodded, still trying to breathe.
"Then you know." Her voice cracked. "You know what I've been holding."
"I know."
"Can you—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Can you witness it? The way you witness people? Make it permanent somehow? If it's frozen forever in this moment, if someone truly sees it—"
"Then it's real," Doran finished. "Permanently real. Frozen here forever, witnessed and known."
"And I could let go."
Doran looked at her—at forty years of solitude etched into a face that should have been young. At the weight she carried, heavier than anything he'd ever known.
"If I do this," he said slowly, "it becomes part of me. I carry it forever. The way I carry everything else."
Morwen's face crumpled. "I know. I know. I've had forty years to think about what I'm asking." Tears ran down her cheeks, the first she'd shed in decades. "But I can't do this anymore. I can't stand here forever watching the world move without me."
Doran closed his eyes.
He thought about Orin. About the bird. About the man in the alley. About thousands of moments from the buried cities, all pressing against him, all part of him now.
What was one more?
What was one that actually mattered?
"Show me exactly where," he said. "Show me what to witness."
Morwen's sob was the most human sound he'd heard in weeks.
It took three days.
Morwen guided him through the shape of the tear, the nature of the thing pushing through, the exact moment she'd frozen. Doran learned to see it the way she saw it—not as a moment, but as a breach. A wound in reality that had been held closed by nothing but will.
On the third day, he was ready.
"I'm going to witness it now," he said. "When I do, it becomes permanent. Frozen here forever. And you can let go."
Morwen nodded. Her face was wet again.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Whatever happens after this—thank you."
Doran closed his eyes.
He reached for the tear. For the thing inside it. For the moment Morwen had frozen forty years ago.
And he witnessed.
It was like nothing he'd ever felt.
The thing wasn't a person, wasn't a moment, wasn't anything he had words for. It was wanting—pure and ancient and desperate. Wanting to exist. Wanting to be. Wanting to tear through into a world that had never asked for it.
Doran held it anyway.
Held it completely. Saw it completely. Made it permanent with the full weight of his attention.
The thing screamed—not in sound, but in meaning. In fury. In frustration.
Then it went still.
Forever still.
Doran opened his eyes.
Morwen was moving.
Slowly, painfully, after forty years of stillness, she took a step.
Her leg buckled. Doran caught her before she fell.
"I'm moving," she whispered, incredulous. "I'm actually moving."
Doran held her as she sobbed against his shoulder. Behind her, the field was empty. The tear was sealed. The thing was witnessed, frozen, permanent—and no longer her burden alone.
Doran carried it now.
But as Morwen took her first real steps in four decades, leaning on him like a child learning to walk, he decided some weights were worth carrying.
They made it to the tree line by nightfall.
Morwen sat with her back against an oak, looking at the field she'd stood in for forty years. Her legs trembled with unaccustomed use. Her eyes were red from crying.
But she was smiling.
"What happens now?" she asked.
Doran sat beside her. "Whatever you want. You're free."
She was quiet for a long time. Then:
"I want to see things. Everything. Mountains and cities and oceans and people." She looked at him. "Will you come with me? For a while?"
Doran thought about the thing beneath the tree. About the pull that still connected him to that place. About the Silenced One, still waiting after eight hundred years.
But they could wait a little longer.
"For a while," he said.
Morwen's smile widened. For the first time in forty years, it reached her eyes.