The glow from the base of the valley pulsed again, steady now — like a heartbeat.
Karl stood still, his fists clenched at his sides.
Something inside him was responding to it.
Not his heart.
Not his breath.
Something older.
Master Fen had stopped walking.
He stood beside Karl with his arms folded behind his back, gaze locked on the faint light in the trees below.
"That shrine," Fen said slowly, "was sealed two generations ago. None of the elders speak of it. Most even forgot it existed."
Karl didn't respond.
The glow was calling him — not with words, but with pressure, like the air itself was being pulled toward that one point.
Mira walked up behind them, slower now. "So, what's the plan? Send Karl to poke it with a stick?"
Fen gave her a look. "No one pokes sealed relics with sticks."
Karl raised a brow. "You sure? That sounds like something you would've done as a kid."
Mira grinned. "Please. I was too busy breaking curfews and outrunning boars."
The light flickered. For a second, Karl thought he saw something move inside it — a shape, twisting in the mist.
Then, just as quickly, it was gone.
Fen took a step forward. "This changes things. If the relic's waking… the elders will want a council. And they'll ask about you."
"Why me?" Karl asked, though he already knew.
Fen turned to him, eyes serious.
"Because it's responding to you."
Karl swallowed hard.
He didn't want this. The attention. The weight. He just wanted answers.
But a voice in his head — not his own — whispered:
You're not supposed to be here…
His fingers twitched over his chest, where the faint warmth of the wing-shaped mark still burned beneath his skin.
"I'll go," he said suddenly.
Both Mira and Fen looked at him.
"To the shrine," Karl clarified. "I need to see it. I need to know why it's calling me."
Fen hesitated. "That's not a choice I can authorize."
"I'm not asking for permission."
The mist seemed to shift around them, curling upward like thin smoke. From far below, the pulse of light began to grow brighter — not blinding, but deep. Like the echo of something buried under centuries.
Mira stepped closer. Her teasing smile was gone now.
"If you're really going," she said, "you're not going alone."
Karl blinked.
"Someone has to keep you from tripping into a cursed hole, Threadbrain."
He smiled despite himself.
Somewhere far beyond the forest, beneath roots and rock and dusted time…
A slumbering presence stirred.
Not fully awake. Not yet.
But it remembered the shape of a boy it had once known —
Or perhaps the one it had been waiting for.