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She closed her eyes for a moment to listen, her feet moving instinctively on familiar grounds.

Not forget.

Stay.Wait.

Safe.Home.

Ours.

Vines crept gently toward her boots, brushing her ankles like curious children. Trees bent low as she passed, their branches dipping toward her in a gesture that felt almost like a caress—like the tender pat of an old friend's hand on her head. The forest remembered her. Loved her still.

Her moonlit eyes were calm, reflecting not the dark clouds above, but the deep-rooted peace of the place she loved most in the world. A vole darted across the path behind her, followed closely by a squirrel with a flicking tail. Neither startled at her presence. They moved around her as if she were part of the earth itself, despite the predators around her.

Then came the robin.

He swooped down in a cheerful flash of red and brown, chirping as he landed delicately on her shoulder. Seren's lips curved, just barely, into the softest of smiles. Her hand came up instinctively to offer him a perch, but he stayed where he was, content to be close.

The others watched, a little awestruck, but said nothing. This was her world. They were just passing through.

They came to the border just as the clouds began to gather more thickly, a low rumble of distant thunder rolling over the hills.

The clearing held silence like a festering wound.

There was no sign of the bodies now. Hagan had seen the few whole bodies of the Forsaken before they were burned. The attackers had carried the sigil of the Forsaken—but altered. A small line, red and sharp, was added beneath the original mark. Subtle, but deliberate. Every body bore it.

As for the rest, what was left were pieces, mostly. Not enough to call a face or name. Just flesh. Just ends.

No new shoots grew where the fight had taken place. The soil there looked greyed-out, lifeless—as if salted by the horrific violence it had witnessed.

There had been blood. Old stubborn blood, dried in the cracks of stone and bark. The torrents of rain hadn't been enough to wash it all away. Some of it had to be Draken's. And that of the enforcers who had lost their lives.

Hagan stood in the centre of the clearing, eyes narrowed. "They didn't smell like Forsaken," he mused. "They didn't smell like anything."

The others said nothing.

The Oracle, who had trailed behind them most of the walk, suddenly straightened. Her sharp gaze swept the clearing. Something had changed.

She moved to the burial markers—small, rough stones pressed into the soil at the edge of the boundary. The spot where they had laid what couldn't be named as bodies anymore. Something had disturbed them. The ground was turned.

Then Veyr stilled. His eyes locked onto something caught on a low branch—tattered red fabric, frayed and clinging like a warning flag.

He stepped forward, carefully. Plucked it from the branch and held it up.

The others gathered around as the oracle took it from him. Her fingers trembled slightly as she brought the cloth to her nose. She closed her eyes.

"It is true," she whispered as if something that had been on the edges of her mind had just been confirmed. Her voice was thin. Unsettled.

Hagan frowned. "What is?"

Seren could feel the oracle's terror as if it had leapt into her own chest. The cloth, the turned soil, the silence in the ground.

"Not here," the oracle said sharply, her voice breaking its usual hush. "Not here."

They moved quickly, feet crunching softly over leaf and root, the weight of an unseen gaze pressing on their backs.

As they crossed the boundary line, the oracle stopped and turned. Her eyes swept the undergrowth.

Someone or something was there. Watching.