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“I can handle it,” Delilah said, more sure than she felt.

The clearing had been used for generations by witches of their bloodline. It sat between three standing stones and a weeping alder with bark like scarred silver. Tonight, she'd drawn her ritual circle in crushed rose salt and set a ring of candles, each one flickering with blue-white flame. In the center lay her offering: lavender, juniper, and a piece of her own hair braided into a charm.

Delilah stepped into the circle and exhaled.

“Watch over me?” she asked, glancing at Wren.

Wren gave a faint smile. “Always.”

The moment Delilah dropped to her knees and pressed her palms into the dirt, the air shifted.

Cool and damp then hot.

She closed her eyes and whispered the invocation, ancient syllables her grandmother had taught her before she could spell her own name. Her magic pulsed through the words, golden and wild.

Earth beneath me, breath within me. Show me what’s buried. Show me what breaks.

At first, the connection felt like it always had. Familiar. Deep. The woods opening up like an old friend willing to talk.

But then… something bucked.

Delilah gasped, her back arching as energy surged up her arms. The groundhummed. Not just with power—but protest.

“No, no,” she muttered. “Easy now…”

The roots beneath her fingers jerked, twisting. The dirt cracked open in spidering lines across the ritual circle. Wind screamed through the trees—not over them,throughthem.

“Delilah!” Wren shouted, already stepping forward.

But Delilah couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

The spirits were screaming.

She didn’t hear words—just anguish. Like the forest had been torn in places too deep to reach. Her vision blurred with crimson streaks, and her magic surged, then sputtered.

Vines shot up from the earth—long and thorned, snapping across the circle. One grazed her cheek, drawing a hot line of blood.

Delilah’s hands trembled. She tried to withdraw, pull back into herself—but it was like the woods hadlatchedonto her.

Something cold slithered through her mind.

A presence.

Not forest. Not spirit. Not of Celestial Pines.

It watched her through the roots. Fed on her attempt to connect.

Delilah gasped, voice shaking. “There’s something else here… not rot. Not natural. It’s like—it’s likeinvasion.”

Wren’s cane clattered as she stepped closer, her voice taut with fear. “Delilah, come back. Cut the connection.”

But Delilah couldn’t stop. Her lips moved on their own. “It’s fighting me. Like it wants to stay hidden. Like it knowsus, knows how to use our magic against us.”

The candles around her blew out all at once.

Darkness rushed in like a tide.

“If it spreads…” she rasped, “the town’s wards—Celestial Pines—it won’t be hidden. It won’t be safe.”