Keegan stepped closer, his shoulder brushing mine as he looked down at the stone. “You think this place is connected to the stone?”
“I do,” I said, my gaze lifting slowly as the realization settled in. “Or at least to these creatures.”
There was something about how everything here moved together, without colliding, without disruption.
“Or the magic.” Twobble looked at my hands.
“Balance,” I said.
Keegan looked at me. “Balance what?”
“The Wards,” I said.
The word landed between us.
“The Flame Ward,” I continued slowly. “The Stone Ward. The Maple Ward. The Butterfly Ward. They all contribute to our strength.”
“And the wetlands?” Keegan asked.
“I bet those marching were part of Shadowick’s balance,” I said. “Somehow tied to the same system.”
Twobble frowned. “So when the Priestess started messing with the bogs…”
“She didn’t just dry out the land,” I said. “She disrupted the balance, possibly even in Shadowick.”
The stone pulsed again as if I was onto something.
And for the first time since I’d held it, it didn’t feel like a burden.
It felt like a piece, a missing one.
“She’s not just trying to get the stone,” I said, my voice tightening slightly as the full weight of it settled in. “She’s trying to break everything that keeps it from working the way it’ssupposed to. Sure, combined with tears, it might give her power, but when it’s where it belongs, it's even more powerful.”
Keegan’s jaw tightened. “So she weakens the land. Scatters the creatures. Destabilizes the Wards.”
“And then she loses the stone,” Twobble said quietly.
“Thanks to Gideon.” I nodded.
“If she gets it back, there’s nothing left to stop her.” Keegan studied me as I nodded.
“Yes.”
Everything that had been there the whole time, waiting for us to put it together.
Keegan exhaled slowly. “Then leaving it here—”
“Is the only thing that makes sense,” I said.
“That puts the Academy in danger,” Keegan warned.
“Magic is full of choices.”
Twobble nodded. “Risk and reward.”
A winged fox drifted closer again, its soft eyes fixed on the stone in my hand as if it recognized it, as if it had been waiting for it to return.
I reached out slightly, not touching it, just… offering.
