Dawn found Beltin humming.

Not loud, never loud, but not the hollow silence of nights past either. From shutter to shutter, when the haunted knockings sounded, the chanted couplet had drifted like thin smoke, clinging stubbornly to the rafters, and driving the fears away.

The fellowship gathered in the inn’s doorway beneath the sign of The Last Laugh. Tessa had already thrown the bolts wide and left them hanging like a dare. She carried a small bundle in one hand, her jaw tight as stone, though her eyes gave away her heartfelt emotions.

“You’ll want to be gone before the clouds remember what they’re about,” she said, nodding toward the east. Thunderheads pressed low over the hills, dull and restless. “Marsh air drags in storms, same as a warm hearth drags neighbors.”

Boaz hitched his backpack to a more comfortable spot. Thorne brushed past his legs and sat at the threshold, ears twitching at every sound outside.

Theo hitched his pack twice, straps sliding. Tink popped her head from his hood and squeaked, unimpressed. “We’re ready,” Theo muttered. “More or less.”

“Mostly less,” Jaxson said, earning a smirk from Kiera.

Tessa laid the small bundle on the counter and untied the cord. Inside lay a loop of smooth, polished rock, threaded with a twist of silver. The stone bore fine ripples, like frozen waves.

“Riverstone,” she said, holding it toward Boaz. “From the bargemen who ferried sick folk when the marsh flooded. Won’t keep you from being fools, but it reminds fools to hold the same rope.” She pressed it into his palm and closed his fingers. “Don’t lose each other. That’s how they win.”

Boaz felt its lightness, the faint coolness under his skin. Without hesitation, he slipped the loop from the riverstone onto the chain with the Sigil and let it rest against his chest. “It belongs here.” It reminded him of the smooth stone shaped into a fish from the Aguan girl in Coralhaven. He still had it in his pouch.

“Bring it back,” Tessa said, then softer: “Bring yourselves back, anytime.”

Lyra leaned closer. “It suits the Sigil,” she said. “Stone and iron.”

Kiera added, “And thread.” She gave Boaz a small smile. “The part that matters most.”

Across the square, a familiar voice cut in smoothly: “A fine gift. May it hold.”

Lucar stood a few paces off, neat as ever, his satchel light on his shoulder, notebook under his arm. He looked ready to travel, but his eyes were on the houses and broken stones, not the road.

“You’re not coming?” Theo asked, surprised. “You’d rather read mildew and fungus than march with us?”

Lucar chuckled warmly. “Mildew tells stories too. Beltin is a book half-burned, half-rebuilt. If the people will tolerate me, I’d like to read a few pages before they’re lost.” He bowed slightly to Tessa. “With permission.”

Tessa’s mouth tried not to soften and failed by a finger’s width. “You can read whatever you like, just don’t expect us to read it.”

“Fair terms.” Lucar turned to the fellowship. “Safe travels, friends. Thank you for last night’s… music.” His smile was kind, his voice sincere. “If we meet again, may it be under better skies.”

He drifted toward a cobbler propping open his shop, already scribbling notes.

Shaye muttered, “Seems decent enough.”

Telen shrugged. “Masks often do.”

The fellowship crossed the square as a chant followed them faintly: a child hummed, a woman’s voice joined, a man mouthed the words as if testing their weight.

At the south wall, half-covered in ivy and soot, they found a mural: figures faded to shadows, Huma script looping faintly, and at the center, a Sigil ring cracked with age. Inside, a silhouette knelt with hands pressed to its chest.

Jaxson whistled. “That feels a little pointed.”

Theo squinted. “Or poetic. Pointed and poetic.”

Aldryn stepped close, hands clasped behind his back. His voice shifted, lower, rolling in a strange cadence.

“Fýra thaet eóna, fýra thaet reóna.”

The syllables lingered, open and ringing, as though they were meant to be sung rather than spoken.

Kiera frowned. “What was that?”

Aldryn’s mouth twisted. “Old Huma. Roughly: The fire that unites is the fire that sunders. Or perhaps, the fire that creates is the fire that uncreates. The old tongue enjoys riddles more than clarity.”

Lyra’s gaze flicked to Boaz. “Comforting.”

Aldryn’s wit sparked faintly. “True things rarely are. Too many vowels, not enough answers: Old Huma for you.”

Boaz stood beneath the mural. The Sigil stirred warm against his skin, the new Riverstone charm cool beside it. The thunder rolled again, closer, and the sound of a cart on a long wooden bridge.

Kiera reached toward the wall, fingers hovering over the cracked paint. “Do you think the kneeling figure was someone real?”

“Perhaps once,” Aldryn said. “But stone prefers simple stories.”

They moved on under the arch. Beyond lay hills rolling into scrub, fence posts leaning, and a ribbon of road pointing east into the vast marshes. The air smelled different, like wet earth and reeds.

They walked in silence at first, until Jaxson cleared his throat. “All these grim faces, we’ll scare off the marsh-birds before we even get there.”

Theo’s expression perked. “Is that possible? Marsh-birds are said to be fearless.”

“Oh, they’ll be afraid of you, maybe,” Shaye joked.

Kiera laughed softly. “Of Tink, certainly.”

Tink squeaked in protest from Theo’s hood.

Mika bumped Lyra’s thigh with a chuffing sound, almost a laugh. Lyra scratched her rough-spotted neck, and Mika leaned harder, tail swinging wide. The mood eased. Even Aldryn’s mouth twitched at the corners, though he wouldn’t admit it. At a rise, they looked back. Beltin crouched in its bowl of hills, battered but unbowed. A child’s sing-song chant reached them faintly, a thread against the wind.

Lyra whispered, “They’ll keep it.”

“They’ll forget,” Aldryn said, not unkindly. “That’s why songs are shorter than speeches.”

“Then we’ll remind them,” Boaz said. The Sigil pulsed in agreement.

They turned east, toward the marshland waiting with the patience of deep water. Behind them, Beltin chanted to keep the dark from swallowing its doors. Ahead, thunder rolled again.

The first fat drops fell. They did not hurry.

The rain came on patiently.

It started as a freckling on the road, dark coins widening on the dust, then turned to a steady rain falling in gray threads. By the time the city walls sank behind the rise, cloaks were beaded and dripping, and the smell of the world had changed from stone and smoke to reed, peat, and the faint, green-bitter breath of standing water.

They walked with their heads tucked and their hoods up, the rhythm of boots and rain soon meeting each other. The old road thinned to a track, then to a suggestion: a brighter line running through grass that grew taller with every mile. Fence posts leaned like tired old men. In the hollows, puddles collected with a skin like glass until Kestel’s shadow skimmed them and made the water shiver.

“Note to self,” Theo said, peering at his boots as a thin stream found its way in. “Invent waterproofing. Sell to grateful travelers. Retire a wealthy man.”

Tink poked her masked face from his hood and chirped, then promptly withdrew as a raindrop landed squarely on her nose. Mika trotted at the edge of the group, head low, ears swiveling, big paws unbothered by muck. Every so often she gave a soft chuff that sounded suspiciously like a laugh when Theo slipped again. Lyra scratched along the coarse fur of the hyena’s neck as they walked; Mika leaned into it, weighty and pleased, tail swinging.

Eira rode the air ahead of them, a pale shape cutting clean lines through the drizzle, banking and returning with a settling of wings to Kiera’s gloved forearm now and then. Thorne paced close to Boaz’s knee, the lynx’s coat darkened to pewter, whiskers spiked with droplets; he moved with the measured care of a cat who refused to admit he was wet. When the rain pushed harder, he angled his body so Boaz wouldn’t take the full face of the wind.

Shaye and Telen, more comfortable in this wet environment than the others, took the fore when the track narrowed between low rises. Telen set a spear across his shoulders and let the shaft balance like a yoke, hands resting easy at either end. He looked as if he could walk to the sea like that without tiring. Shaye moved in a way the rain respected, slipping off rocks and roots as if she had told them in advance where she meant to place her feet.

Aldryn said little. His hood made a sharp angle of his profile, the rain shedding off it in clean sheets. He walked with his staff held high enough to keep the ferrule from sinking in mud, the old man’s gaze sliding from ridge to reed bed, reading the land the way Lucar had read people. From time to time he stopped and touched the butt of the staff to a stone, listening, as if some echo might confirm the world still remembered itself, even in weather.

They passed a farmstead the marsh had begun to collect like a tax: a fence already half-swallowed in sedge, an unroofed byre, a lone apple tree standing obstinate among the reeds with a scatter of small, sour fruit at its feet. On one wall, rain cleaned a patch of soot and ivy away and left a scrap of painted Terran letters glistening through. Lyra slowed to see, but the next gust pushed the curtain of rain across it and the letters vanished.

“Do you ever get the feeling this place is watching?” Jaxson asked, tipping his hooded head to take in the rolling land. “Not in a ‘things in the dark’ way. Just… keeping books on us.”

“The marsh keeps count,” Telen said. “Of feet. Of water. Of the unwary.”

“Comforting,” Theo muttered, then brightened as a thought caught him. He braced his rune-carved staff under his arm, fished out a charcoal stub, and began sketching quickly on a waxed scrap, raindrops trying their best to sabotage him. “If the road’s gone, we’ll make our own map.”

“On dissolving paper?” Shaye said.

“On ingenuity,” Theo said, and squinted, and continued until Tink decided the charcoal was a snack and the map acquired a small set of raccoon teeth marks.

The rain strengthened, then thinned, then strengthened again. It made a low music on cloak and grass. The polished Riverstone ring beneath Boaz’s shirt stayed cool at his breast, the stone seeming to hold its own weather. From time to time, the Sigil answered with a warm pulse — not a command, not a warning — attention. He found his hand rising to touch it, then forced it to the strap of his pack.

Around midday, they crested a bracken-covered swell and the world changed. The land fell into a wide, flat plain where water and earth were negotiating a fickle truce. Patches of standing pools reflected a sky the color of tin; islands of grass stood like small, dark land masses among them; farther out, the reeds waved. A lone heron worked a channel with infinite patience, seeking food.

“Welcome to the edge,” Kiera said quietly.

“Is there a center?” Jaxson asked.

“Yes,” Aldryn said. “But it moves.”

They ate under the lee of a low rise where the wind was less bold: hard bread, dried fish, and a handful of dried berries that tasted like last summer. Theo tried to coax a warm cup of tea over a miserly flame and succeeded in making steam only. Tink hovered above the cup with both paws extended and soaked it up.

“Careful,” Lyra said. “You’re sure to burn yourself with a flame that big.”

“I,” Theo said, “am a professional.” The flame coughed and died. He stared at it. “Retired.”

A faint line of smoke rose from farther east, a thin thread almost lost against the rain. Jaxson and Telen both saw it at once.

“A camp?” Lyra asked.

“Or a trap,” Shaye said.

“Or someone else who is cold and started a fire,” Kiera said.

They watched it until wind shouldered it out of sight. When it did not return, they moved on, giving that direction a little more room than the others.

The ground grew less honest as the afternoon wore on. A patch that looked firm would sigh and swallow a boot to the ankle, then insist it had always been that way. Water found their socks no matter what path they chose. Reeds curtained small pools with inviting grace until Thorne tested their edge and decided he had better things to do. Once, Jaxson reached for a tuft of grass to steady himself and found a leech going about its day with serious intent. He wiped the gooey slime from his hand on the nearest unfortunate reed.

“Score so far,” he announced. “Marsh: one. Jaxson: slimy.”

“Very slimy,” Kiera said, looking at his hand.

Aldryn lifted his staff and pointed without speaking. Ahead, an old causeway, a shelf of stones long ago raised above the water, showed itself in a broken line. “We’ll use that,” he said. “While it remembers it’s a road.”

The stones were slick but sure, and for a time their feet rang on solid supports that had been placed with intent. The rain softened to a fine silver which seemed to float rather than fall. Eira ghosted ahead, then returned and settled lightly, watching the dark with a hunter’s calm.

As the light began to go from the sky, not sunset in colors, but the slow retreat of what brightness the clouds would allow, Theo lifted his head, sniffed dramatically, and declared, “Dry ground.”

“Prove it,” Shaye said.

He did: the causeway ended on a slightly crowned knuckle of land where sedge gave way to short, tough grass and a few small trees hunched as if they had braced through one storm too many. It wasn’t much, but it was an island that promised not to sink while you blinked.

“This will do,” Aldryn said, and if his voice held relief, he hid it well.

They set about the same chores their travel always demanded, rain or no. Jaxson and Lyra found the driest wood, which had the quality of being merely damp, and coaxed a small, stubborn flame from it with pocket tinder and quiet persistence. Shaye walked the edge of the island twice, marking where the ground sloped meanly, then set a few small bells from her kit along a likely approach, their tongues muffled with wet thread to keep them from ringing with the wind. Telen chose three stones with the gravity of a priest and set them where he could plant his spear and turn to any side.

Kiera wrung her hair by the fire, then laughed at herself for the futility of it and kept it braided instead. Eira shifted from her arm to a low branch, a pale weight in the dusk. Mika sprawled on her belly at the edge of the ring and watched the water with narrow eyes, as if daring it to try something clever. Thorne shook once, disgusted, then settled against Boaz’s legs.

Boaz stood a little apart, the Riverstone charm cool against his chest, the day’s weight drawing his shoulders down. He watched the marsh breathe around them and felt the pull inside him answer: the coals under the ash, asking to be ignited. He closed his hand over the Sigil and told himself, Not yet.

The rain had a last word and softened to mist. In the half-light, the world seemed to exhale. Somewhere in the reeds, a frog announced an opinion, another disagreed, then both decided it wasn’t worth the effort. The small fire took heart and settled into itself.

“Better,” Jaxson said, stretching the stiffness from his back. “We look less like drowned cats now.”

Thorne opened one golden eye at him and closed it again with clear judgement.

Theo held his hands over the heat and sighed as if a long argument had admitted defeat. “All right,” he said. “I will concede water is a formidable foe.”

“Save your concessions,” Aldryn said, easing onto a flat stone with a careful old-man sound he refused to acknowledge. “You’ll need them for the marsh.”

Boaz listened to the murmur of them and the steady breath of the fire and knew the moment had come when talk bent itself toward whatever lay under the day’s surface. He glanced at Aldryn, then at the others, their faces cast into sharp relief by the small light, tired and steady. He touched the Sigil, felt the polished Riverstone’s coolness, and drew a breath.

“Before we sleep,” he said, voice low. “I need to talk with you.”

The rain, at last, held its tongue. The marsh listened. The fellowship did too.

Boaz’s words hung where the rain had been. The marsh breathed around the little island of grass: the slow lap of water in the reeds, a frog’s single brave syllable, the hush that followed. The fire spat once and settled, throwing a small red light over their faces.

Thorne leaned against Boaz’s knee and looked up, as if to say: “go on.”

Boaz drew the Sigil from under his shirt. Iron drank firelight and gave back a dull, steady glow along the edges. The loop of Riverstone lay against it like a pale crescent, its silver thread catching an ember’s pulse. He turned the iron in his palms, felt the warm weight, felt, behind the metal, the presence he’d been pretending all day not to notice.

“It keeps calling,” he said, low. “Vetharion. I don’t even have to reach for it anymore. It’s there. Waiting. Like heat you feel before you step near a forge.”

No one interrupted. Even Theo, who had three jokes queued for any silence, pressed his hands to the pot for warmth and said nothing.

Boaz swallowed. “I know what some of you think it is. A weapon. A torch to swing when the dark presses in. But Aldryn’s right about one thing… this isn’t a hammer.” He shook his head. “It’s… looking at me while I’m looking at it. And what it wants isn’t blood. It’s truth. Justice.” He closed his fist, then forced it open again. “I’m afraid I’ll mistake one for the other. That I’ll call judgment where it doesn’t belong. That I’ll become… what I shouldn’t be.”

Aldryn tipped forward, elbows on his knees, hands wrapped over the head of his staff. In the ember-glow, his eyes were more keen than kind, but held no mockery in them, only attention. “Listen to me,” he said, voice pitched for them and the marsh and no one else. “Vetharion is called the mirror-wound for a reason. It does not heal. It shows. It answers unjust intent with its own weight. If a hand is raised to strike without right, if a heart sets itself to cruelty, the spell turns it and lets the blow fall where it was born.”

Lyra’s fingers tightened around her mug. “Then if Boaz used it on someone who meant no harm?”

“It would balk,” Aldryn said simply. “Or bend back on the caller if anger tried to force it. Truth is stubborn.” He let the words sit a moment, then added, dryer: “A trait I admire in it.”

Boaz felt the iron warm a fraction in his palms. “So if I stand in anger…”

“…it will see your anger first,” Aldryn said. “It will reflect what fills you. That is the danger. Not that it is wild, but that we are.” His gaze shifted to the Sigil. “Like a mirror, it can only return what stands before it. If you bring vengeance to it, it will show you vengeance dressed as justice. If you bring clarity, restraint, mercy where it can be had and firmness where it must, it will answer with judgment, not rage.”

Kiera leaned in, her face all soft edges in the firelight. “Then don’t carry it alone,” she said. “Let us help you see when your sight is clouded.”

Boaz blew a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I don’t know how to ask the right question of it. Half the time I don’t even know what the right question is.”

Aldryn’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “That’s the beginning of wisdom,” he said. “Only fools summon a fire, certain only they deserve to be warm.”

Theo spoke, voice cautious. “So… if a bandit is coming at us with a blade, and Boaz uses Vetharion…”

“If the intent is murder,” Aldryn said, “Vetharion will answer it. If the intent is defense, or fear without blood behind it, it will not. I told you, the old Huma loved riddles. The Triune Sigil loves truth. It can be kinder than men, and harsher.”

Jaxson scrubbed rain from his jaw with the back of his hand. “All right,” he said. “Then the rule is simple. Don’t be the villain, don’t call judgment in a temper, and listen to your friends when you’re wrong.”

Shaye, who had been a still dark line at the fire’s edge, nodded once. “And when in doubt,” she said, “don’t use it.”

“Patience won’t make you less brave,” Telen added. He set his spear across his knees. “Only more alive.”

Boaz stared at the ring until the firelight blurred. “I saw the stone wight on the Windward Road, in a vision,” he said softly. “When I used Vetharion, the wight… shattered. That felt like justice. But in Beltin, when the voices came, I felt the Sigil rise like a shout in me.” He shook his head. “I didn’t call it. We sang. And that seemed truer than fire.”

Aldryn nodded, satisfied. “You’re not a bell that rings the same note for every storm,” he said. “There are many ways to break a lie. Vetharion in your hand is one. A song on many tongues is another. Do not swing the Sigil where a chorus will do.”

Lyra’s smile reached her eyes then. “Hear that? My song is a weapon.”

“Your songs have always been weapons,” Jaxson said blandly. “Just ask any tune you’ve ever bullied.”

Mika gave a soft chuff that could have been laughter, then pushed her big head under Lyra’s hand until Lyra obliged with a firm scratch along her neck. Eira fluffed, resettled her talons on the branch, and blinked slow.

Boaz looked at Kiera. She had not taken her gaze off him. “What if I mistake my anger for justice?” he asked. “Truly. What then?”

“Then you wait,” Aldryn answered before she could. He wasn’t unkind; he was precise. “Better a truth that arrives a heartbeat late than a lie that runs ahead of it by a mile. The Sigil will still be there when your temper cools.” He tilted his head. “And if the need is urgent and you cannot see, you lean on us. Ask. Let four or five eyes be clearer than one.”

Kiera’s hand found Boaz’s. Warmth moved from her skin to his, not a mending, but a steadying. “We will tell you when you’re too close to the edge,” she said. “And when you’re the only one who can stand there.”

Boaz looked at their hands. The tension in his chest unknotted a fraction.

Aldryn settled his shoulders as if putting on an old cloak. “I will give you more than warnings,” he said. “I will give you a measure to test yourself by: words older than me, older than this marsh. Hear them, and keep them.” He drew breath, and the cadence of the old tongue didn’t come; instead, he spoke in the common speech so none of the sense could slip away.

“When ruin walks where kings once stood,
And moonlight falls on blooded wood,
One voice shall wake the broken song—
Not born to rule, but right a wrong.”

Silence followed, thick and attentive. The coals ticked. Somewhere in the reeds, a fish made a quiet splash and was gone.

“We know those,” Kiera said, almost a whisper. “Beltin sings them now.”

“Part,” Aldryn said. “The part that saves doorways. There is more.” His gaze flicked to Boaz, held, then eased away. “But this will do for tonight. Tie Vetharion to these lines when you doubt. Ask: does what I’m about to do right a wrong? Or does it simply win an argument? If it’s the latter, keep your hand at your side.”

Theo lifted a finger. “Sub-rule: I am not a wrong. Please do not right me with fire.”

“You’re a collection of small wrongs,” Jaxson smirked.

Tink squeaked in scandalized agreement and climbed deeper into Theo’s hood.

A grin pulled at Boaz despite himself. It fell a moment later, but it had been there, and it left a warmer place behind. He closed his fingers around the Sigil and felt, lightly, like a nod, the answering steadiness in the iron.

“Then I will wait when I should wait,” he said. “And I will ask when I can’t see. And when the time comes, I will speak truth: not to win, but to right what can be righted.”

“Good,” Aldryn said, and some of the lines left his face. “That is all the Sigil is asking.”

Lyra leaned back on her hands, eyes on the low sky. “I like thinking of it as a mirror,” she said. “Not a sword. A sword can be stolen. A mirror only shows you yourself.”

“Unless you break it,” Theo said.

“Then you only cut your own hand,” Shaye replied.

Telen looked pleased with that and said nothing more.

Thorne’s rumble vibrated through Boaz’s boot. The lynx pressed closer, content as ducks in rain. Boaz slid the Sigil beneath his shirt. Stone and iron settled against his chest, cool and warm, a promise and a warning living side by side.

The fire eased to coals. On the edge of the island, the marsh drew a slow breath, as if testing their little warmth and choosing, for now, to leave it be. Far off, thunder rolled once more, like the sound of a distant cart on a long, hollow bridge.

“Watches,” Jaxson said at last, practical again. “Same order as last night. No heroics. If the marsh starts singing, wake Lyra and point her at it.”

Lyra clicked her tongue. “I’m a weapon, remember.”

Boaz squeezed Kiera’s hand and let go. “I’ll take the middle watch,” he said. “I want the quiet hour.”

Aldryn stood with the careful grunt of a man who refused to admit to stiffness. “Then I’ll have last,” he said. “I like greeting mistakes early.”

“You mean dawn,” Theo said.

“Same thing,” Aldryn replied, and for once, everyone let his dry smile be the last word.

They settled to their places. The little bells Shaye had set gave a damp whisper when the wind nudged them and then fell still. Eira tucked her head under one wing. Mika flopped onto her side with a sigh that said she had decided, firmly, that she deserved the only patch of entirely dry grass. Kestel clicked once, satisfied with the branch he’d chosen. Tink sleep-chittered into a dream where all cups were full and there was plenty of bread.

Boaz lay back and watched the low sky move. The words settled into him the way the day’s damp had, everywhere at once:

Not born to rule, but right a wrong.

He did not know yet where that would lead him. But the fear he might swing blind had loosened its grip. When he closed his eyes, the Sigil did not press like a demand; it rested like a mirror turned facedown until morning.

The marsh held its breath through the night.

Rain drifted in once or twice, soft as a sigh, and the reeds clicked faintly in the wind, but nothing more pressed close. When Boaz woke for his watch, Thorne stirred beside him, the lynx’s eyes gleaming in the fire’s last coals. They listened. Once, far off, came the splash of a heavy creature finding water, then silence again.

The hours stretched long, but the Sigil stayed quiet against his chest. Warm, steady. Waiting.

By the time Aldryn roused and took the last watch, the sky had begun to pale. The mist turned silver where it lay on the marsh pools, and the reeds wore beads of dew like tiny lanterns. A frog called, another answered, and the hush seemed less like dread and more like waking.

“Dawn,” Aldryn muttered, leaning on his staff. “Even the marsh must let the day in.”

When the others rose, they moved stiffly, but their faces held no dread. Kiera coaxed a little warmth from the rekindled fire; Jaxson scouted the edge of the causeway; Lyra shook rain from Mika’s coat and laughed when the hyena responded with a great, wet shake of her own. Theo muttered about soggy bread until Tink stole it anyway, and even Shaye’s lips twitched once.

They packed quickly. The Riverstone charm lay against the Sigil as Boaz fastened the chain again. He touched it once, just long enough to feel its coolness. Don’t lose each other, Tessa had said. He looked at the line of his companions, already forming along the path, and found the words rooting deeper than the charm itself.

When they set out, the marsh opened before them in long sweeps of water and reed. The storm had fled east, leaving the air sharp and clean. Behind them, Beltin lay hidden in its bowl of hills, but its faint morning song seemed to follow still, no louder than memory.

Boaz tightened the strap of his pack, the Sigil steady against him. One voice shall wake the broken song. The words lingered, but this time they did not feel like a burden. They felt like a promise, one the marsh itself seemed to be waiting to hear fulfilled.

They turned more toward the east. The wind shifted, carrying the smell of moss and peat, and somewhere ahead thunder rumbled once, low and patient, like a hand knocking on a door not yet opened.

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