I nudged him with my shoulder. “He gets that from you.”
Daniel scoffed. “He gets that from Claire.”
I didn’t argue. I just let the name settle between us like a quiet truth.
We crested a low rise—and the forest changed.
Not the way it did at the Moon Clearing, where the magic felt bright and obvious and communal. This shift was quieter. Subtler. Like stepping into a room where people had been whispering and suddenly stopped.
The trees here were older, their trunks thicker, bark dark and ridged like armor. Moss hung heavy, but it wasn’t the cheerful green of damp wood. It was deep and velvet, almost black in places, as if it drank light instead of reflecting it.
Daniel slowed, and without thinking I matched him.
“This is new,” I said.
Daniel’s jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
We reached a stand of pines so close together they formed a wall.
Daniel didn’t push through it.
He touched the bark.
Not a knock. Not a gesture.
A greeting.
The air answered.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a feeling—pressure shifting, like the world inhaled. The trees in front of us didn’t move, not visibly, but the space between them opened in a way my brain struggled to interpret. A gap where there hadn’t been one, like the forest had decided to make room.
I stared. “What the hell.”
Daniel shot me a look. “Try to keep the commentary to a minimum.”
“I’m sorry,” I hissed, following him through. “I’m watching you politely ask a wall of trees for permission.”
“That’s not what—” He stopped himself, then sighed. “Okay, fine. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
“Unhinged,” I muttered.
Daniel’s mouth quirked. “I’ve missed your sparkling support.”
The path beyond was narrow, dirt packed hard like it had been walked by the same two sets of feet for years.
Only two.
We emerged into a hollow that felt like the forest’s ribcage—protected on all sides by ancient trees and stone. Light filtered down in thin slivers, but none of it reached the center.
Because the center wasn’t lit by sun.
It was lit by something else.
A pool of pale silver lay in a natural basin of stone, smooth as glass, shifting like it had breath. Not moonlight exactly. Not sunlight. Something colder. Older. Like light that had never belonged to the sky.
A circle of stones surrounded it—smaller than the Moon Clearing’s ring, each one etched with shallow lines that weren’t carvings so much as… memory pressed into rock.
My lungs tightened.
