The morning after Mireveil Marsh was unnaturally quiet. Mist still clung to the trees like spider silk, and the air tasted of ash and cold iron. No birds sang. No wind stirred. The group had slept in uneasy silence, each curled around their private ghosts.
Isla woke first. Her limbs ached as if she'd been running in her dreams. She turned to check on the others: Finn was still curled tightly on his bedroll, arms crossed, muttering faintly in his sleep. Lyra sat with her back to them, awake but unmoving, staring into the mist. Caius leaned against a gnarled pine with his arms folded and eyes closed—awake, but pretending not to be.l
Melodias paced restlessly, ears twitching at every sound that wasn't there.
"We should move," Isla said quietly.
Caius opened his eyes slowly. "Agreed."
They packed in silence. No one mentioned the visions. Not Finn's scream in the night. Not the moment Caius had drawn his blade in confusion. Not the phantom banshee Isla had nearly chased into a ravine. They moved like ghosts of themselves.
The landscape shifted as they walked. The pines grew darker, blackened at the base as if fire had once tried and failed to consume them. The sky remained gray, refusing to warm despite the rising sun. Hours passed in hollow steps.
Caius finally broke the silence. "You saw something, didn't you?" he asked Lyra.
Lyra didn't stop walking. "We all did."
"That doesn't answer me."
"It doesn't have to."
"You were screaming in your sleep," he pressed. "You called a name."
Lyra turned sharply, eyes flashing. "Stay out of my head, Nightshade."
"I'm not in your head. I'm trying to figure out if you're still a threat."
"Enough," Isla snapped. "We all went through something in that marsh. Whatever we saw... it wasn't real. It doesn't matter now."
"It does matter," Caius said, his voice low. "Because whatever cursed ground that was, it pulled something out of us. It used our memories against us. And that doesn't just fade."
Melodias let out a low growl.
"What is it, boy?" Finn asked.
The dog sniffed the air and turned eastward, toward a trail of broken underbrush.
"Something passed through here recently," Lyra murmured. "Look. Footprints."
They followed the path, boots crunching over blackened pine needles. Within minutes they stumbled upon a clearing—a smoldering campsite. Tents half-collapsed, bedrolls trampled, fire reduced to ash. The air was thick with char and something else... a faint humming.
"What's that?" Isla asked.
Caius moved forward and picked up a metal object glinting among the ashes. An amulet. Simple, round, etched with a crude eye symbol. The same one carved into the stones in the marsh.
As he held it, it pulsed faintly. Once. Twice.
Then it stopped.
"Isla," he said. "Look familiar?"
She nodded slowly. "That's the same symbol from my mother's pendant. The one she wore when she vanished."
Lyra took a step back. "We shouldn't be here."
"Why?" Caius asked. "Because this is Circle territory?"
"Because we were meant to find this," she said. "And nothing the Circle leaves behind is harmless."
Melodias barked, hackles raised. His growl deepened.
Finn pointed. "There. On the tree."
Carved into the bark, words in rough, jagged lettering: "SHE WALKS AMONG YOU."
A silence fell. Then, without a word, Caius drew his blade. Lyra didn't flinch, but her jaw tightened.
"You still think it's me?" she asked.
"I think someone's playing with our heads," he muttered.
Isla turned. "We keep moving. East, to the Grotto. We don't stop. We don't trust what we see."
They stepped back into the forest. Trees loomed like skeletal sentinels, and shadows stretched longer than they should have.
Then the ground shuddered.
A sound like cracking ice echoed beneath their feet. Melodias barked frantically.
"What now?" Finn shouted.
The ground beneath Isla split.
She didn't even have time to scream. The world tilted, the roots tore, and she fell through the earth.
"ISLA!"
Caius lunged forward, too late. The hole sealed behind her like it had never been.
Silence returned.
Then Lyra whispered, "The earth remembers who walks it."