The Wounds Spread
For six days after Atlas Nine fell, nobody crossed the boundary.
The machines remained where they were.
The workers did not.
Every evening, they gathered along the perimeter and stared west.
At first they joked about it.
By the fourth night, the jokes stopped.
Something had begun walking around the camp after midnight.
No one saw it.
They only heard branches snapping.
One.
Then another.
Then another.
Slowly circling the perimeter.
The guards doubled their patrols.
The sound continued anyway.
Tovan Rheel spent most of those six days inside Atlas Nine.
He told everyone he was studying the damage.
That was true.
It simply was not the whole truth.
The machine’s severed leg had been crushed inward with enough force to deform reinforced alloy.
Tovan had calculated the pressure required.
Then calculated it again.
Then a third time.
The numbers did not make him feel better.
Sela found him beneath the walker just before dawn.
His boots protruded from an open maintenance hatch.
“You’re still in there?”
“Yes.”
“You ate?”
Silence.
“Tovan.”
“I had something.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
Sela crouched and looked beneath the chassis.
Tovan was lying among cables and grease with a diagnostic slate pressed against his chest.
She sighed.
“There is no hidden engineering answer.”
“I didn’t say there was.”
“You’ve been measuring the same bend for three days.”
“It failed wrong.”
“It got crushed by a root.”
“Yes.”
“That is the answer.”
Tovan slid himself out.
His face was filthy.
“It shouldn’t be possible.”
Sela stood.
“Neither should north be underground. We’ve moved on.”
She handed him a folded requisition sheet.
Tovan opened it.
His expression changed.
Four additional excavation walkers.
Twelve boring engines.
Three mobile foundries.
Hundreds of replacement and expansion workers.
Then—
security contracts.
Tovan looked up.
“This wasn’t approved through engineering.”
“No.”
“Who signed it?”
Sela tapped the bottom.
Tovan already knew.
Marcellin Auric.
The second convoy arrived three days later.
The first had looked like progress.
This one sounded like preparation for war.
Heavy engines tore ruts into the road.
Crates of blasting cylinders travelled beside bridge components.
Armoured supply wagons rolled between towering construction machines.
And alongside them came the Bronze Mantle Company.
Veterans.
Mercenaries.
Former soldiers.
People who had spent too many years learning how quickly a peaceful assignment could become something else.
Their captain was Jarek Voss.
Human.
Broad-shouldered.
Grey beginning at the edges of his beard.
He wore plain armour scarred by old repairs.
No polished crest.
No ceremonial sash.
His company was mixed.
Dwarven riflemen.
Human veterans.
A minotaur shieldbearer.
Two goblin crossbowmen.
A lizardfolk tracker with a missing finger.
They looked less impressive than the machines.
Tovan trusted them less.
Jarek dismounted near the generator yard.
“Rheel?”
“Yes.”
“Voss.”
Tovan nodded.
Jarek looked toward the forest.
“How many dead?”
“None.”
Jarek looked back at him.
“None?”
“Not from attacks.”
“Machines lost?”
“Several.”
“People taken?”
“Survey teams.”
“And?”
“They came back.”
Jarek scratched at his jaw.
“Fine.”
He looked west again.
“What am I supposed to shoot?”
Tovan frowned.
“Preferably nothing.”
Jarek grunted.
“That’ll make the contract interesting.”
Marcellin Auric gathered the senior staff that afternoon.
The revised construction map hung behind him.
Tovan saw the problem immediately.
The original corridor had been replaced with three major routes.
Three became seven secondary branches.
Extraction zones had appeared deep inside the Sanctuary.
New stations.
New bridge sites.
New drilling areas.
Tovan stepped closer.
“This is triple the original clearance.”
“Approximately.”
“We haven’t even finished mapping the first route.”
“Then map faster.”
“That isn’t how terrain works.”
Marcellin continued turning pages.
“We cannot allow the project to fail because one route is vulnerable.”
Sela looked at the map.
“You mean because the forest keeps breaking it.”
Marcellin ignored her.
Jarek spoke from near the back.
“What are the rules?”
Marcellin looked up.
“Rules?”
“If they attack the crews.”
“Protect the crews.”
“How?”
“With whatever force is necessary.”
Jarek shook his head.
“No.”
Marcellin’s expression tightened.
“No?”
“I want it stated properly.”
Jarek folded his arms.
“If somebody dies, I don’t want three clerks deciding afterward that I misunderstood you.”
A few workers glanced at one another.
Marcellin stared at him.
“Defensive force only.”
Jarek nodded once.
“Fine.”
Then:
“Who decides what defensive means?”
Marcellin’s patience thinned.
“You do. That is why you are here.”
Jarek said nothing more.
But he did not look reassured.
Deep inside the Sanctuary, the news travelled without messengers.
Roots carried tremors.
Birds changed migration.
Water altered taste.
Creatures abandoned places they had occupied for generations.
Eryndra stood beside a pool whose surface had turned black.
It was not poisoned.
It simply no longer reflected the sky.
Behind her waited Vaelor Thane, Warden of the Thornwake.
One side of his face was still elven.
The other had become bark and knotted wood.
Silver insects lived within a hollow in his shoulder.
When he became angry, they emerged.
Today they covered half his arm.
“Three columns,” Vaelor said.
“Yes.”
“More machines.”
“Yes.”
“Armed outsiders.”
“Yes.”
Vaelor struck his staff against the earth.
The black water shuddered.
“Then it is done.”
Eryndra remained still.
“What is?”
“We wake the Thornwake.”
“No.”
Vaelor stared at her.
He had expected argument.
The flatness of the answer angered him more.
“They cut Althuun.”
“I know.”
“They return with soldiers.”
“I know.”
“Then stop saying that.”
Eryndra turned.
Vaelor pointed east.
“We bury their machines. We break their roads. We drive every living thing wearing their colours out of the Sanctuary.”
“We do that already.”
“Not enough.”
“No.”
Vaelor stepped closer.
“No?”
“No. It is not enough.”
That silenced him.
Eryndra looked toward the eastern horizon.
“They are counting on that.”
Vaelor’s brow tightened.
“On what?”
“On us losing patience.”
His insects crawled over his wrist.
Eryndra continued.
“If we destroy their camps tonight, what happens tomorrow?”
“They leave.”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“Marcellin sends the bodies east.”
Vaelor said nothing.
“He tells the court that the Sylvan slaughtered workers. He tells merchants their people are unsafe. He tells the Justicars the western roads are under attack.”
Vaelor’s jaw hardened.
“They are invading us.”
“Yes.”
“Then let them call it what it is.”
“They will not.”
Eryndra stepped toward him.
“They will call it a Sylvan uprising.”
Vaelor looked away.
Eryndra pointed toward the black pool.
“Right now they are the ones crossing into our Sanctuary.”
She pointed east.
“They are the ones cutting. They are the ones building. They are the ones violating the boundary.”
Her voice lowered.
“If we drown three camps and leave hundreds dead, that story changes.”
Vaelor looked back at her.
“You fear their story?”
“I fear what follows it.”
He waited.
Eryndra answered:
“Justicar banners.”
The insects on Vaelor’s arm stopped moving.
“Gilded coin buying more soldiers. Court orders. Other guilds deciding we have become a threat to the realm.”
She looked around them.
“And then we are no longer defending against one expansion.”
Vaelor understood now.
He hated that he understood.
“We defend against Ashkar.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Far away, something enormous moved between the trees.
Vaelor lowered his staff.
“So we bleed carefully.”
Eryndra’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“We do.”
“No.”
She stepped closer.
“We hit them. We break the machines. We take their crews. We close every road they open.”
Her voice was colder now.
“But we do not give Marcellin a field of bodies he can carry to the Supreme Ruler.”
Vaelor stared at her.
“And if the Supreme Ruler does nothing?”
Eryndra did not answer immediately.
Then:
“Then I stop caring what story Marcellin tells.”
The first expanded construction column entered the Sanctuary at dawn.
Two excavation walkers.
Four armoured haulers.
Portable pylons.
A bridge-laying engine.
Forty Synapse workers.
Thirty Bronze Mantle guards.
Tovan rode in the lead carriage.
Sela stood behind him.
For the first mile, nobody spoke much.
By the second, tension loosened.
Someone began singing.
Another worker shouted at him to stop.
Then the convoy halted.
Hundreds of deer stood between the trees.
Not ordinary deer.
Some carried flowering vines through their antlers.
Others bore pale markings along their sides.
At the centre stood a great stag taller than Jarek’s horse.
Tovan raised a hand.
The machines stopped.
Jarek rode forward.
“Road blocked?”
Tovan nodded.
“East?”
“Swamp.”
“West?”
“Ravine.”
Jarek looked at the herd.
“Then we wait.”
Sela watched the stag.
“They know.”
Jarek glanced at her.
“They’re animals.”
“That one’s looking straight at you.”
“It’s still a deer.”
The stag lowered its head.
Then turned.
The entire herd followed.
Within moments, they vanished into the forest.
Tovan continued staring.
Sela noticed.
“What?”
“They weren’t stopping us.”
“No?”
He shook his head.
“They were leaving.”
Jarek looked ahead.
“Leaving what?”
Tovan did not answer.
Three hours later, the drilling crews reached a ridge.
The road required a cut through solid stone.
No major root systems appeared on the scans.
No nesting grounds.
No visible reason not to proceed.
Tovan checked the readings repeatedly.
Then gave the order.
“Fire.”
The detonation shook the valley.
Stone exploded outward.
Dust rolled over the construction line.
A few workers cheered.
Then the mountain screamed.
The sound came from inside the rock.
Low.
Grinding.
Alive.
Cracks raced across the exposed ridge.
Jarek shouted:
“Back!”
The stone opened.
A colossal shape pulled itself from the mountain.
Rock plates covered its back.
Roots tore around its limbs.
It had no visible eyes.
Only a hollow mouth surrounded by jagged stone.
One worker froze.
Jarek dragged him backward by the collar.
The creature swung an arm.
The blasting platform vanished beneath it.
Metal folded.
A Synapse rigger flew across the clearing.
Another disappeared beneath debris.
The minotaur shieldbearer charged toward two trapped workers.
The giant struck.
His shield cracked.
He dropped to one knee.
“Move!”
The trapped engineers crawled free.
Tovan climbed into the nearest excavator.
Sela followed.
“This thing isn’t built for this.”
“I know.”
“That was not reassurance.”
Tovan forced the excavation arm downward between the workers and the creature.
The stone giant struck.
The machine twisted.
Steam erupted from broken lines.
“Tovan!”
“I’m trying!”
The giant raised its arm again.
Then stopped.
Eryndra stood on its shoulder.
She placed one hand against the stone.
The creature trembled.
She whispered.
The raised arm slowly lowered.
Then the giant retreated.
Step by step.
Back into the ridge.
Stone closed around it.
Jarek raised his weapon.
Eryndra jumped down.
Tovan grabbed Jarek’s wrist.
“Don’t.”
Jarek pulled free.
“One of your workers is dead.”
Eryndra looked toward the collapsed platform.
Her face changed.
Not guilt.
Grief.
But not for the same reason.
She walked toward the ridge.
Put one hand against the broken stone.
“They drilled through his sleeping chamber.”
Jarek stared at her.
“He killed a man.”
Eryndra turned.
“And they woke him with explosives.”
Jarek’s jaw tightened.
“So that makes it fine?”
“No.”
Eryndra looked toward the body.
“It makes it ours to remember.”
Then she walked into the trees.
Jarek watched her go.
“I don’t understand these people.”
Tovan looked at the ruined ridge.
“I’m starting to.”
The dead worker’s name was Orin Pell.
Twenty-three years old.
Apprentice structural engineer.
Eleven months in the Neon Synapse.
The workers held a funeral beside the unfinished road.
No speeches.
Someone placed Orin’s tool belt beside the body.
His roommate left half a bottle of cheap spirits.
Sela stood beside Tovan.
Marcellin arrived late.
He spoke first to the foremen.
Then the quartermaster.
Then Jarek.
He asked which machines could still operate.
Tovan stared at him.
Sela saw it.
“Don’t.”
“He’s asking about equipment.”
“I know.”
“Orin is right there.”
“I know.”
Tovan started walking.
Sela grabbed his sleeve.
He stopped.
Not because she had pulled hard.
Because he realized he had no idea what he intended to say.
That night he entered Marcellin’s pavilion without permission.
Marcellin was reading loss reports.
“You knew.”
Marcellin did not look up.
“About?”
“The ridge.”
“I knew there were irregular readings.”
“You had the survey.”
“Yes.”
“It flagged movement underground.”
Marcellin looked at him now.
“What are you asking?”
“Why did you approve blasting?”
“Because the road passes through the ridge.”
“Orin is dead.”
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
Tovan stopped.
Marcellin put down the report.
“I know his name. I know which crew he belonged to. I know where the compensation goes.”
Tovan looked sick.
“You make it sound like paperwork.”
“It is paperwork now.”
“He was twenty-three.”
Marcellin rubbed his forehead.
“Yes.”
Tovan waited for more.
Nothing came.
“You don’t care.”
Marcellin’s expression changed.
Not anger at first.
Fatigue.
Then irritation.
“That sentence is childish.”
Tovan stiffened.
Marcellin stood.
“You think caring is the same as stopping?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do.”
He pointed at the reports.
“I have injured workers. Damaged equipment. delayed shipments. Frightened investors. A dead apprentice whose family must be paid.”
His voice rose slightly.
“I care because all of those things now require action.”
Tovan stared.
“And what action do you take?”
Marcellin sat down again.
“Continue.”
Tovan’s face went blank.
Marcellin opened another ledger.
“When you have a viable reroute, bring it to me.”
The construction spread.
That was the horror of it.
Not because the Sanctuary stopped fighting.
Because the Neon Synapse adapted.
Every act of resistance became an engineering problem.
Roots destroyed roads.
The Synapse raised roads above the soil.
Vines strangled machinery.
Heated plating was added.
Spores incapacitated workers.
Respirators were issued.
Rivers changed course.
Portable bridge systems followed them.
Fog confused navigation.
Guidance cables were stretched between towers.
Each solution made the next incursion easier.
The forest began losing ground.
A silver-barked grove disappeared beneath a mobile foundry.
A nesting basin became an extraction pit.
A luminous marsh was drained.
A mountain pass was blasted wide enough for heavy machinery.
The workers did not wake each morning intending to destroy the Sanctuary.
They woke because shifts began at dawn.
Because wages were due.
Because somebody had to repair engines.
Somebody had to move stone.
Somebody had to maintain the generators.
Destruction acquired schedules.
Eryndra responded differently now.
The first rule remained.
No massacres.
Everything beneath it changed.
Convoys vanished into fog.
They returned without engines.
Machines were dragged into rivers.
Supply caches disappeared overnight.
Bridges were grown shut beneath masses of roots.
Bronze Mantle patrols found themselves surrounded by beasts and forced to abandon their weapons before being released.
Workers were taken from remote sites.
They returned days later.
Barefoot.
Unarmed.
Terrified.
Most carried the same message.
Leave the Sanctuary.
One foreman came back with his uniform covered in living moss.
A young engineer returned clutching a seed so tightly it had cut his palm.
A mercenary returned without his sword and refused to explain what had taken it.
No one died.
Not by accident.
Not yet.
Jarek slammed the reports onto Tovan’s table.
“They’re doing this on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“They know where our patrols are.”
“Yes.”
“They know the routes.”
“Yes.”
Jarek pointed at him.
“Stop agreeing with me.”
Tovan blinked.
“What do you want?”
“I want authority to strike them before they strike us.”
“They haven’t killed anyone.”
Jarek laughed.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it matters.”
“To you.”
“To everyone.”
Jarek leaned forward.
“No, Chief. It matters to the people who aren’t dead yet.”
He straightened.
“Sooner or later, one of them decides to stop being careful.”
At Ilyr’s Rest, that moment nearly came.
To Gilded surveyors, the basin looked empty.
Dry.
Dormant.
Unproductive.
They did not understand that every eighty years, enormous white flowers emerged from the soil.
Creatures travelled across the Sanctuary to reach them.
Some migrations lasted months.
The next bloom was still years away.
So the machines moved in.
Eryndra and Vaelor watched from a ridge.
Below, a construction walker crushed a dormant root bed beneath one metal foot.
Vaelor made a sound in his throat.
“Enough.”
Eryndra said nothing.
Another machine began drilling.
Vaelor looked at her.
“Enough.”
She still did not answer.
He stepped closer.
“Eryndra.”
“I heard you.”
“Then call them.”
She knew what he meant.
The old things.
Storm spirits.
Buried beasts.
River forces not awakened in generations.
One command could tear apart the entire construction column.
Eryndra looked down at Ilyr’s Rest.
“What happens after?”
Vaelor’s expression twisted.
“I am done with after.”
“I’m not.”
“They are killing now.”
“Yes.”
“So kill them now.”
Eryndra finally turned.
“No.”
Vaelor struck his staff into the ground.
“You said if the ruler failed us—”
“He has not even heard us yet.”
“And whose fault is that?”
That landed.
Eryndra said nothing.
Vaelor stepped closer.
“We wait for reports to travel while roots die under iron.”
His voice cracked.
Not elegantly.
Not dramatically.
Simply with rage.
“My people are asking why I stop them from fighting.”
Eryndra looked back toward the machines.
“So are mine.”
“Then answer them.”
She could not.
Below them, a drill bit entered the earth.
The sound seemed to travel through the entire ridge.
Eryndra closed her eyes.
“Not yet.”
Vaelor stared at her with disgust.
“Then tell Ilyr that.”
He walked away.
The first Sylvan killed by the expansion was not a warrior.
Her name was Lethari.
A young scout.
She had been carrying three hatchlings across a root bridge when a Synapse boring engine severed the network beneath it.
The bridge collapsed.
Two hatchlings survived.
Lethari did not.
Eryndra arrived before the body had been moved.
Tovan was already there.
He stood several paces away.
Helmet in his hands.
“I’m sorry.”
Eryndra ignored him.
She knelt beside Lethari.
Touched her face.
Picked up one of the surviving hatchlings.
Tovan shifted.
“The survey didn’t show the bridge.”
Nothing.
“We didn’t know anyone was above it.”
Nothing.
“I can shut this section down.”
Eryndra looked at him.
Tovan stopped.
Her expression frightened him.
Not because it was furious.
Because it was empty.
“We can reroute,” he said quietly.
Eryndra looked back at Lethari.
“There is always another route for you.”
Tovan lowered his eyes.
After a while he said:
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Eryndra stood.
“I want you to leave.”
“I can’t.”
She stared at him.
Tovan seemed ashamed of the answer.
But he did not change it.
Eryndra nodded once.
“Then stop asking me to understand you.”
She carried Lethari away.
That night, the Thornwake gathered.
Not in a hall.
Beneath a vast arch of living roots.
Elven wardens.
Humans bound to the Sanctuary.
Bark-skinned guardians.
A moss-covered troll who had protected the same river for centuries.
Creatures whose names had never crossed into eastern languages.
Lethari lay at the centre.
Wrapped in leaves.
Vaelor stood beside her.
“No more.”
The words moved through the gathering.
Someone called:
“Wake the river.”
Another:
“Call the cliff storms.”
A third voice shouted:
“Bury Auric Station.”
Eryndra stepped forward.
Vaelor looked at her.
He did not tell her to stop.
This time he wanted to hear what she would say.
Eryndra looked across the gathered Sylvan.
“We strike everything they build.”
Murmurs.
“We break every machine we can reach.”
Louder.
“We take every worker we can take without killing them.”
Some anger in the crowd.
Then Eryndra’s voice hardened.
“If they raise weapons against us, defend yourselves.”
Vaelor watched carefully.
Someone shouted:
“Why spare them?”
Eryndra turned toward the voice.
“Because I will not give Marcellin the war he wants.”
The gathering quieted.
She pointed east.
“He wants bodies.”
Her voice was cold now.
“He wants frightened merchants. Dead workers. Stories of Sylvan beasts tearing apart camps.”
She looked at Lethari.
“He wants the Supreme Ruler to hear about our violence before he hears about theirs.”
Vaelor’s face remained hard.
Eryndra continued.
“So we do not give it to him.”
Someone shouted:
“How many of ours die for that?”
Eryndra stopped.
The question hung there.
She looked at Lethari.
Then at the broken faces around her.
“Too many already.”
No one spoke.
Eryndra swallowed.
“For that, I am responsible.”
Vaelor looked at her sharply.
She did not avoid his gaze.
“I believed we could hold them without forcing the throne to choose.”
Her voice had become quieter.
“I was wrong.”
The crowd shifted.
Eryndra continued.
“I go east.”
Vaelor frowned.
“To the ruler?”
“Yes.”
“What if he refuses?”
Eryndra looked toward the dark canopy.
“Then the Sanctuary stops asking permission.”
That changed the room.
Vaelor stared at her for a long time.
Then lowered his staff.
Not agreement.
Not forgiveness.
But enough.
Before Eryndra could leave, blood came first.
A Bronze Mantle patrol discovered Sylvan saboteurs dismantling a drilling platform.
The Sylvan fled.
The mercenaries pursued.
Nobody later agreed who fired first.
The official account claimed the Sylvan turned and attacked.
Several workers insisted they did not.
Three Sylvan died.
One human woman.
One bark-skinned guardian.
One antlered creature barely older than Lethari.
One Bronze Mantle soldier suffered a wound to the shoulder.
By dawn, the Gilded report had already been written.
ARMED SYLVAN ASSAULT REPELLED BY PROJECT SECURITY.
Tovan read it.
Then read it again.
Sela took the page.
“Wasn’t what happened.”
“No.”
“You signing?”
Tovan stared at the line bearing his name.
He picked up the pen.
Hesitated.
Then crossed the report from corner to corner.
Underneath he wrote:
INCIDENT ACCOUNT DISPUTED.
Sela leaned over.
“Put the witnesses.”
Tovan added:
WORKER TESTIMONY CONTRADICTS SECURITY SUMMARY.
He put down the pen.
Sela looked at him.
“That’s going to hurt.”
Tovan rubbed his face.
“I know.”
Marcellin summoned him before noon.
The report lay on the desk.
Marcellin tapped it with one finger.
“What is this?”
“My objection.”
“I can see that.”
Tovan waited.
Marcellin’s jaw tightened.
“This report goes to insurers. Court offices. Investors. Contract representatives.”
“The report is false.”
“Were you there?”
“No.”
“Then you do not know that.”
“I spoke to workers who were.”
“And security spoke to theirs.”
“Jarek didn’t write this.”
Marcellin paused.
That told Tovan enough.
“You approved it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Marcellin sat back.
For the first time, the exhaustion showed clearly.
“Because I need the project under control.”
“It isn’t.”
“No.”
The answer surprised Tovan.
Marcellin continued.
“I have dead Sylvan. A dead engineer. Nervous financiers. A security company beginning to complain about unclear authority. A court asking why the western project appears to be collapsing.”
He pointed at the report.
“I cannot send them uncertainty.”
Tovan stared at him.
“So you send them a lie.”
“I send them something they can act on.”
Tovan looked disgusted.
Marcellin’s patience vanished.
“Do not look at me like that.”
Tovan said nothing.
Marcellin stood.
“You think truth runs governments?”
Tovan shifted uncomfortably.
“I think it should matter.”
“It matters when someone can use it.”
Tovan looked toward the map.
“And who gets to use Lethari?”
Marcellin frowned.
“Who?”
Tovan looked back at him.
“That’s what I thought.”
He left.
By the end of the second month, the first permanent Gilded structure stood inside the Sanctuary.
Stone.
Steel.
Gold-braced windows.
A tower overlooking a cleared valley.
Marcellin called it Auric Station.
The workers called it the Nail.
From a distance, that was exactly what it looked like.
Something hammered into living earth.
The Gilded Coven raised its banner above the roof.
Gold cloth unfurled over the trees.
Eryndra watched from a distant ridge.
Vaelor stood beside her.
Below, machine-light burned across bare ground where enormous red ferns had once grown.
Farther west, another column moved into a new valley.
Then another.
Vaelor spoke first.
“When do you leave?”
“Tonight.”
He nodded.
No argument.
Eryndra watched the banner.
Behind them, animals were already moving deeper into the Sanctuary.
Great herds.
Winged predators.
Burrowing beasts.
Creatures leaving places they had occupied for generations.
Not migration.
Retreat.
Vaelor looked toward them.
“If he refuses you…”
“I know.”
“No.”
He turned to her.
“I need to hear it.”
Eryndra looked at him.
“If the Supreme Ruler refuses to stop them, I return.”
Vaelor waited.
“And?”
Eryndra looked down at Auric Station.
The golden banner snapped in the wind.
“And we remove them ourselves.”
Vaelor nodded.
That was enough.
For now.
Eryndra looked east.
Toward the heart of Ashkar.
She had spent months trying to prevent the Sanctuary from becoming the aggressor in someone else’s story.
Now her own people were beginning to ask whether that restraint had protected anything at all.
Below her, another ancient tree fell.
The sound rolled across the valley.
Then another.
Then another.
The Gilded Coven believed persistence would break resistance.
The Neon Synapse believed every obstacle could be solved.
The Sylvan had believed restraint would preserve their right to defend themselves.
Only one of those beliefs remained intact.
And Eryndra was no longer certain it was hers.