Night fell over the Hollow—but it did not bring silence.
Stars blinked through the canopy, watching.
The trees did not sleep. The moss did not still. The wind did not wander.
And at the Spiral’s edge, where the soil still trembled from the seed’s bloom, she stood unmoving.
Not alone.
The elder moss-scribe sat on a broken stone nearby, gaze distant but voice sharp. “The Crown will not wait long before it returns. And next time, they’ll send more than steel.”
She did not answer.
Her fingers pressed into the dirt, slow and deliberate. The soil here was warmer. Softer. As if the Grove itself leaned closer when she touched it. She felt the heartbeat beneath the surface—not hers, not the world’s. Theirs. The ones buried without names. The ones fed to root and rot so the Spiral could endur
