The ground never slept in the Hollow.
Even after light had returned to the Grove’s center, the earth trembled—quietly, like a breath drawn too deep. Isabella could feel it under her fingertips as she sat beside the stream now cutting its way through the newborn grass. Water, clear and cool, trickled between moss-laced stones that hadn't existed a day before.
She’d created this.
No, she corrected herself. Remembered it into being.
But with memory came consequences.
Kael kept watch nearby, pacing the perimeter of their new camp with his blade resting loosely in one hand. He hadn’t slept either, but he wasn’t shaken—not the way she was. He was angry. Protective. And growing more afraid of what she might face next.
She hadn’t told him everything.
Not about the visions in her sleep. Not
