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Professor Neris watches him carefully. "Connected?"

Cassian searches for the words. "It's like..." He gestures vaguely through the air. "Standing in a crowded room while everyone's voices come from somewhere else." A chill runs down my spine.

Professor Neris turns to Keeper Aelindra. "Where did the first disturbance occur?"

The woman points toward a narrow section of woodland just beyond the village. "There. We found nothing. We looked for days."

The four of us walk into the trees. The village sounds disappear surprisingly quickly. Within minutes only wind remains. Rhyven suddenly slows. I notice it immediately.

"What?"

He doesn't answer. Instead he kneels beside the path. Boot prints. Dozens. Human. Wolf. Horse. Completely ordinary. Then nothing. The tracks simply stop. Not fade. Stop. As though everyone walking there had vanished mid-step.

Cassian quietly exhales. "That's impossible."

"It should be." Rhyven replies.

Something else catches my attention. The forest feels wrong. Not dead. Not silent. Just avoided. I scan the ground. "No animal tracks."

Cassian looks down. He frowns. "You're right."

Leaves cover the forest floor almost untouched. Not a single deer print. No rabbits. No foxes. Nothing. Rhyven studies the trees surrounding us. "They're going around." I follow his gaze. Sure enough fresh tracks appear again roughly twenty metres farther away. Everything simply avoids this patch of earth. Professor Neris stops in the center of the clearing. "Eirea."

I already know what she's asking. I kneel. A faint brown stain marks one exposed root. Old blood. Hardly more than a smear. "One of the ward keepers." Keeper Aelindra explains quietly. "He cut his hand while inspecting the area."

I draw a slow breath. Then place two fingers against the dried blood. The world tilts. Cold. Not winter. Absence. The ward keeper walks through the forest carrying a lantern. Birdsong surrounds him. Branches sway overhead. He reaches this exact clearing. Stops. Looks around. The birds stop singing. Not one by one. All at once. He frowns. Calls out. No answer. He takes another step. And suddenly everything disappears. The trees remain. The ground remains. The lantern remains. But the life is gone. No birds. No insects. No sound. Not silence. Absence. The ward keeper stumbles backward. His knife slips. Cuts his palm. Blood strikes the ground. Then the world returns. Birds explode into song. Wind rushes through the leaves. The keeper collapses, gasping.

I jerk backward. Air rushes into my lungs. Hands are shaking.

"Eirea." Professor Neris kneels beside me. "What did you see?"

I struggle to steady my breathing. I feel slightly dizzy. "The forest. It was empty. Not physically." I shake my head. "There was..." I search desperately for words. "Nothing alive." Cassian's face pales. He knows. He remembers. The corridor. The trial. The same impossible feeling. Rhyven has moved several metres away. He crouches beside something half-buried beneath the soil. His fingers brush away loose dirt. Stone. Ancient stone. Far older than the current ward markers. Professor Neris joins him. None of us speaks. Slowly he lifts the broken fragment free. A circle. Broken by a single line. The same symbol. The one carved into the forgotten shelves beneath the Silent Archive. Professor Neris stares at it for a long moment. Then quietly says the words none of us wanted to hear. "This is no coincidence."

The forest suddenly feels much colder. For several long moments, none of us speaks. Professor Neris turns the fragment over in her hands, brushing away centuries of dirt with the edge of her glove. The symbol remains unmistakable. A broken circle. Interrupted by a single vertical line. The same mark hidden throughout the Silent Archive. The same mark no history book mentions. The same mark the Academy had deliberately forgotten. She wraps the fragment carefully in a cloth before placing it inside her satchel. "We're done here." Her voice is calm. Too calm. I recognize it now. Professor Neris only sounds like that when she's thinking ten steps ahead.

Keeper Aelindra is waiting for us at the edge of the forest. She immediately notices the expression on Professor Neris's face. "You found something."

Professor Neris studies the older woman for a moment. Then nods once. "I did."

"What is it?" Aelindra asks.

"I'm not certain yet." Not a lie. Not the whole truth either. Professor Neris reaches into her satchel and removes a small notebook. "I need the exact dates." She starts. "The disturbances. Every one of them."

Keeper Aelindra lists them without hesitation. "The eighth. The ninth. The eleventh. The thirteenth."

Professor Neris writes each date carefully. "When is the next inspection?" She asks.

"Tomorrow morning."

Professor Neris closes the notebook. "I'll send additional ward keepers."

The older woman looks relieved. "I appreciate it." Professor Neris doesn't answer immediately. Instead, she looks toward the quiet forest behind us. "So do I." The ride back to the Academy is quieter than the journey there. Even Cassian has abandoned his usual habit of filling silences with theories. I can't stop thinking about the Blood Echo. Not the empty forest. The transition. One heartbeat... Life. The next...Nothing. It hadn't felt like death. Death leaves something behind. Grief. Pain. Loss. This had been different. As though life itself had been erased for a single impossible moment.

"We're running out of time." Professor Neris breaks the silence.

Rhyven looks toward her. "So you believe it too." His voice is rough.

"I no longer have the luxury of believing otherwise." She keeps her eyes on the road ahead. "The village. The Archive. The manifestations. The letters. The ancient ward marker." She exhales slowly. "Separately they are unusual. Together..." She doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't need to.