The morning sun painted golden stripes across the hut's dirt floor when Catriona woke to an empty pallet beside her. Her breath caught—that same fleeting panic from the early days when she'd feared he'd vanished like morning mist. Then she heard the laughter. She found them by the stream, Daelen knee-deep in the sparkling water with his trousers rolled up to reveal scars Catriona didn't recognize—thin white lines crisscrossing his calves like old battle wounds. Kieran splashed beside him, his dark hair plastered to his forehead as he overturned smooth river stones with tiny, determined hands. "There you are," Daelen called, spotting her. Water dripped from his elbows as he held up a woven reed basket. "We're hunting breakfast." Kieran turned, beaming. His simple linen tunic clung to his small frame, the hem darkened by the water. "Cat! Look what I found!" He cupped his hands, revealing a crayfish that waved its tiny claws defiantly. "Cat?" She arched an eyebrow, leaning her wh

The first stranger came at harvest time, when the meadow grasses swayed golden and the air smelled of ripe blackberries. Catriona was teaching Kieran to braid garlic stems into hanging bundles when the staff’s glow sharpened suddenly, its light shifting from warm gold to the cold blue of storm warnings. Kieran’s small hands stilled on the garlic stalks. His nose wrinkled. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered. “She smells like old books and... sadness.” Daelen emerged from the hut, his carving knife still clutched in one hand. He didn’t speak, just positioned himself between the approaching figure and Kieran, his shoulders tense beneath his sun-faded tunic. The woman stopped at the meadow’s edge, her tattered gray cloak blending with the twilight. When she lowered her hood, moonlight revealed sharp cheekbones and eyes the pale blue of winter ice. Her gaze swept over them—lingering on Kieran—before settling on Catriona. “So the stories are true,” she said, her voice rough as tree ba

The silence after the vision was deafening. Kieran lay sprawled in the frostbitten grass, his chest heaving as if he’d run for miles. The charred flower’s shadow draped over him like a funeral shroud, leaching the warmth from his skin. Catriona cradled his head, her fingers brushing the stark white strands of his hair—now streaked with veins of black that pulsed like the rift’s tendrils. Daelen stood over them, his knife still raised toward the empty air where the vision of the oceanic abyss had vanished. "We need to burn that damn flower," he growled, eyeing the monstrous plant. "No!" Kieran’s hand shot out, grasping Daelen’s wrist with unnatural strength. His obsidian eyes reflected the twisted garden around them—moonpetals curling into barbed hooks, garlic bulbs oozing acidic sap. "It’s part of the map now. Burning it would leave a hole... a hole *they* could crawl through." The Drowned watched from a distance, their coral-armored forms clicking like insects. Marek stepped

The first villagers came at dawn, their faces gaunt and hopeful. They brought offerings of honeycomb and woven charms, kneeling at the meadow’s edge where the garden’s tendrils brushed the scorched earth. “Heal my son,” a woman pleaded, thrusting a feverish toddler toward Kieran. “The blight took his voice!” Daelen stepped between them, his knife glinting. “There’s no cure here.” But the garden disagreed. A root slithered forward, piercing the boy’s chest. The child gasped—first in pain, then wonder—as flowering vines erupted from his mouth. His voice returned, sweet and clear, singing a melody none could place. “See?” Kieran smiled, his eyes reflecting the garden’s golden pulse. “She remembers how to help.” The villagers rejoiced. Daelen watched in silence as the singing boy plucked a blossom from his tongue, its petals humming with the garden’s light. By week’s end, a shantytown sprouted at the meadow’s border. The desperate and the dying came, bearing wounds both phys

Catriona died every hour. Daelen stood frozen in the memory-arch’s prism, forced to watch her plunge into the garden’s core again and again—her body unraveling into light, her final scream curdling into the static that now lived in his bones. Each loop carved deeper: her hands dissolving, her voice pleading, *“Don’t look back.”* But he always did. And each time, the memory fractured further, bleeding splinters of moments he’d never lived. A child’s laughter in a meadow. A knife buried in snow. A man with Kieran’s eyes but not his face, whispering, *“You were the first sacrifice.”* The immune girl’s voice slithered through the cracks. **“Warriors make poor gardeners. You have to rot before you grow.”** Daelen clawed at the archway’s thorns, their venom searing his hands. “Let me out!” “You’re not screaming the right words,” Catriona said—except her mouth was his mother’s, her hair threaded with black petals. She pressed a seed into his palm. **“Plant this where the silence hurt